I want a bash command that i can pipe into that will sum a column of numbers: I just want a quick one liner that will do something essentially like this:
cat FileWithColumnOfNumbers.txt | sum
Anybody have one in their back pocket?
+2
A:
Does two lines count?
awk '{ sum += $1; }
END { print sum; }' "$@"
You can then use it without the superfluous 'cat':
sum < FileWithColumnOfNumbers.txt
sum FileWithColumnOfNumbers.txt
FWIW: on MacOS X, you can do it with a one-liner:
awk '{ sum += $1; } END { print sum; }' "$@"
Jonathan Leffler
2010-06-22 19:02:10
Ok that qualifies. I wound up doing the same thing basically only by piping it through perl. The final result (it's parsing a column out of a timesheet csv, and totaling):$ perl -e '$sum = 0; while(<>) {s/^.*,(.*)$/\1/gi; $sum += $_ unless /Cost/;} print $sum;' report_for_XXX_XXX_2010Jun01_to_2010Jun30.csvquick and dirty.
jskaggz
2010-06-22 19:10:17
@jskaggz - see my answer for a bit shorter/simpler Perl version :)
DVK
2010-06-22 19:11:14
+1
A:
You can use bc (calculator). Assuming your file with #s is called "n":
$ cat n
1
2
3
$ (cat n | tr "\012" "+" ; echo "0") | bc
6
The tr changes all newlines to "+"; then we append 0 after the last plus, then we pipe the expression (1+2+3+0) to the calculator
Or, if you are OK with using awk or perl, here's a Perl one-liner:
$perl -nle '$sum += $_ } END { print $sum' n
6
DVK
2010-06-22 19:04:06
+1
A:
Use a for loop to iterate over your file …
sum=0; for x in `cat <your-file>`; do let sum+=x; done; echo $sum
t6d
2010-06-22 19:06:49
+1
A:
while read -r num; do ((sum += num)); done < inputfile; echo $sum
Dennis Williamson
2010-06-22 19:56:09
+2
A:
I like the chosen answer. However, it tends to be slower than awk since 2 tools are needed to do the job.
$ wc -l file
49999998 file
$ time paste -sd+ file | bc
1448700364
real 1m36.960s
user 1m24.515s
sys 0m1.772s
$ time awk '{s+=$1}END{print s}' file
1448700364
real 0m45.476s
user 0m40.756s
sys 0m0.287s
ghostdog74
2010-06-23 00:08:39
Good point! On SunOS 5.8 bc even core dumps with such a big input file (see my post below).
radoulov
2010-06-23 08:10:12
awk is the correct tool for the job! The bc solution is OK but what happens when you need to sum two columns or perhaps filter out negative numbers. With awk you can easily and sensibly add in extra logic, with the bc solution you end up with piping through yet another command (cut or grep)
James Anderson
2010-06-23 08:26:27
+1
A:
[a followup to ghostdog74s comments]
bash-2.03$ uname -sr
SunOS 5.8
bash-2.03$ perl -le 'print for 1..49999998' > infile
bash-2.03$ wc -l infile
49999998 infile
bash-2.03$ time paste -sd+ infile | bc
bundling space exceeded on line 1, teletype
Broken Pipe
real 0m0.062s
user 0m0.010s
sys 0m0.010s
bash-2.03$ time nawk '{s+=$1}END{print s}' infile
1249999925000001
real 2m0.042s
user 1m59.220s
sys 0m0.590s
bash-2.03$ time /usr/xpg4/bin/awk '{s+=$1}END{print s}' infile
1249999925000001
real 2m27.260s
user 2m26.230s
sys 0m0.660s
bash-2.03$ time perl -nle'
$s += $_; END { print $s }
' infile
1.249999925e+15
real 1m34.663s
user 1m33.710s
sys 0m0.650s
radoulov
2010-06-23 08:15:38
+1 for pointing out the coredump in the bc version of this. I'm hesitant to change the "answer" of this question because the bc version works fine for me (i'm totalling up 30 numbers).
jskaggz
2010-06-23 16:58:43