From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Jin Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: printing columns into a file Date: Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:45:54 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <3e9fd39f-2c27-49a5-9f33-51020c58cba2@u7g2000yqm.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1262042668 31573 80.91.229.12 (28 Dec 2009 23:24:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2009 23:24:28 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Dec 29 00:24:22 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1NPOwk-0000Y0-V5 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 29 Dec 2009 00:24:19 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:35965 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1NPOwk-0006xb-VB for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:24:19 -0500 Original-Path: news.stanford.edu!usenet.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!u7g2000yqm.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 36 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.135.70.156 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1261968354 15596 127.0.0.1 (28 Dec 2009 02:45:54 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2009 02:45:54 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: u7g2000yqm.googlegroups.com; posting-host=128.135.70.156; posting-account=2IPQaAoAAAA7djfTQEC8gH9WOo_1LfPd User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091216 Fedora/3.5.6-1.fc11 Firefox/3.5.6,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Original-Xref: news.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:175824 X-Mailman-Approved-At: Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:22:59 -0500 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:70917 Archived-At: 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 date.txt 12 30 28 30 month.txt 5 6 3 2 How can I keep the blank as it is in the original fiile? Please help.