I need to print the following sequence for illustration purposes in two columns
a-z
which has alphabets from a to z such that they are in 13-character columns.
How can you echo the characters from a to z into two columns?
+2
A:
Better solutions exist, I'm sure, but I'll give it a shot:
$ echo "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" | sed -e 's/\(.\)\(.\)/\1 \2\n/g'
a b
c d
e f
g h
i j
k l
m n
o p
q r
s t
u v
w x
y z
Stephan202
2009-05-20 23:06:08
@Stephan: Thank you for your answer! I had a similar solution in mind. Regexes understand the command a-z. I still believe that there is a built-in way to expand the a-z.
Masi
2009-05-20 23:20:28
I get the following output for your command: a bnc dne fng hni jnk lnm nno pnq rns tnu vnw xny zn. I uses Mac Leopard's sed.
Masi
2009-05-20 23:44:11
@Masi, i suspect you missed a '\'... did you type? for i in {a..z}; do echo -n $i; done | sed -e 's/\(.\)\(.\)/\1 \2n/g'
nik
2009-05-20 23:47:23
@Masi, Try changing 's/\(.\)\(.\)/\1 \2n/g' to 's/\(.\)\(.\)/\1 \2\n/g'
nik
2009-05-20 23:49:53
@nik: I did not use the for-loop. --- No difference for your last code.
Masi
2009-06-07 17:50:15
+2
A:
Very nice Stephan,
How about avoiding to type a through z with a loop?
for i in {a..z}; do echo -n $i; done | sed -e 's/\(.\)\(.\)/\1 \2\n/g'
nik
2009-05-20 23:44:55
A:
Your question did not specify how to distribute the characters in the two coloumns, so here is an alternative answer:
prompt> paste <(echo "abcdefghijklm" | sed 's/\(.\)/\1\n/g' ) <(echo "nopqrstuvwxyz" | sed 's/\(.\)/\1\n/g')
a n
b o
c p
d q
e r
f s
g t
h u
i v
j w
k x
l y
m z
prompt>
hlovdal
2009-05-21 00:35:05