Formatting info into columns

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi

This question has kind of been asked before but I couldn't get any of the solutions to work.

I need to format fields being cut from a file into columns so it looks like a table.
e.g

Full name Address Hiredate
Joe Smith London 11.01.01
Bill King Liverpool 15.05.99
Harry Bloggs Leeds 12.11.04

I belive awk is used but I'm not sure how, if anyone could help that would be great

Thank you

2 
awk ' { printf("%-20s%-15s%10s\n",$1" "$2,$3,$4) } ' file
3

One other possible ways may be ::

cat <filename> | column -t

However, the awk one mentioned above by anbu provides more formatted output.

Cheers, Murli.

4

Thanks for the replies

5

Hi Cray_murli, it seems that column command doesn't exist.

I have table, would like to output fisrt column each line. Used awk as anbu's but output just in one line.

Hope your helps. Thanks.

6

You might forgot to add newline character

awk ' { printf("%-20s%-15s%10s\n",$1" "$2,$3,$4) } ' file
7

Hi Every1,

Is there othr way to do the same, because awk will traverse each line and might become slow in case of very huge input file.

Correct me if I am wrong!

8

Thansk anbu23. I got mistake with command.

9

There is no way to reformat a file without reading and writing each line in the file. The awk solution would be hard to beat in speed.