awk without printing newline

Question

I want the variable sum/NR to be printed side-by-side in each iteration. How do we avoid awk from printing newline in each iteration ? In my code a newline is printed by default in each iteration

for file in cg_c ep_c is_c tau xhpl
printf "\n $file" >> to-plot.xls
    for f in 2.54 1.60 800 
        awk '{sum+=$3}; END  {print  sum/NR}' ${file}_${f}_v1.xls >> to-plot-p.xls
    done
done

I want the output to appear like this

cg_c ans1  ans2  ans3  
ep_c ans1  ans2  ans3 
is_c ans1  ans2  ans3
tau  ans1  ans2  ans3 
xhpl ans1  ans2  ans3

my current out put is like this

**cg_c**
ans1
ans2
ans3
**ep_c**
ans1
ans2
ans3
**is_c**
ans1
ans2
ans3
**tau**
ans1
ans2
ans3
**xhpl**
ans1
ans2
ans3

Answer 1

The ORS (output record separator) variable in AWK defaults to "\n" and is printed after every line. You can change it to " " in the BEGIN section if you want everything printed consecutively.

Answer 2

awk '{sum+=$3}; END {printf "%f",sum/NR}' ${file}_${f}_v1.xls >> to-plot-p.xls

print will insert a newline by default. You dont want that to happen, hence use printf instead.

Answer 3

one way

awk '/^\*\*/{gsub("*","");printf "\n"$0" ";next}{printf $0" "}' to-plot.xls