What is the easiest way to join 12 columns?

Question

I have 12 columns separated by a tab. How can I join them side-by-side?

[Added] You can also tell me other methods as AWK: the faster the better.

Answer 1

If you are just using awk to concatenate the columns I would use 'tr' and delete tab

cat file1 | tr -d '\011'>  file2

Answer 2

Try this:

{
    print $1$2$3$4$5$6$7$8$9$(10)$(11)$(12)
}

I'm not an awk genius so I don't know if there's some sort of looping construct you can use.

Answer 3

Since you asked specifically about awk (there are tools better suited to the job), the following is a first-cut solution:

awk '{print $1$2$3$4$5$6$7$8$9$10$11$12}'

A more complicated and configurable solution, where you could change the number of columns used for output, would be:

awk -v lim=12 '{for(x=1;x<lim;x++){printf "%s",$x};print ""}'

Other possibilities, if you're not restricted to awk, are:

tr -d '\011'                     # to combine ALL columns on the line.
cut --output-delimiter='' -f1-12 # more general (1-12 or 3-7 or 1-6,9).

Based on your edit and comments, I suggest cut is the best tool for the job. Use "man cut", "info cut" or "cut --help" for more details (this depends on your platform).

Answer 4

Well, it depends on your editor/command of choice. But generally, it boild down to replacing the character with nothing. For example, in vim: ":%s/\t//g"

Answer 5

You did not mention what tool you would like to use but any text editor would be able to replace the tab to an empty character, I guess that would work, that's what I usually do.