RE: printing columns into a file

[Arnaldo Mandel <am@ime.usp.br>]

Jin wrote (on Dec 27, 2009):
 > Hi,
 > 
 > I will really appreciate any help on this!
 > 
 > I have a file looking like the following
 > 
 > date        month           year
 > 
 > 12              5                1982
 > 30              6               1982
 >                   3               1982
 > 28                               1877
 > 30              2                1888
 > 
 > As you can see, my file has blanks in a column, but I like to keep it
 > that way.
 > When I tried to use awk to print each column into a separate file
 > (date.txt, month.txt, and year.txt),
 > it doesn't retain the blank information on emacs but moves the value
 > below upward to cover the blank. So, it'd be like
 
There are two solutions:

a) You slighly change the file format, introducing a column
   separator.  Tab would be convenient, since you can make it look
   like a space in emacs.  Then you can use that as a field separator
   for awk or cut.

b) If you don't have a field separator, your columns are determined by
   a range of positions in the line.  You can figure them out and give
   them as parameters to  cut -c.

-- 
Arnaldo Mandel                        
Departamento de Ciência da Computação - Computer Science Department
Universidade de São Paulo, Bra[sz]il	  
am@ime.usp.br
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