[kman42]

I have a tab-delimited text file that I need to modify. I can use the command line or TextWrangler, whichever would be easier. Each record has three entries separated by tabs and finished with a hard return. I'd like to preface each record with a ">" character and put a hard return after the second field. So it currently looks like:

xxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxxx

And I would like it to look like:
>xxxx xxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxx

What would be the easiest way to do this? I know there is some simple command line tool that could handle it.

thanks,
kman

[besson3c]

*erased command, didn't work as I originally thought*


where "test" is the name of my file I want to read

[besson3c]

and if you want to output this to a new file:

*erased command, didn't work as I originally thought* > test2

where test2 is the name of the new file, test is the name of the orig file

[besson3c]

Ahh... my command is not quite there. Only works with files containing one line.

[besson3c]

Here you go:

awk {'print ">"$1,$2 "\n" $3'} test


$1 = the first column, $2 = the second column, etc... You may have to change these values if there is stuff before or after the columns you are interested in.

[kman42]

E for effort. Any other unix jockeys out there that can help me out?

[besson3c]

My last command works kman, what is the problem with it? WHat output are you getting?

[kman42]

Sorry, I started my post before yours appeared. Thanks.

[kman42]

Hmm...still not working for me. I get the following:

Code:
$ awk {'print ">$1,$2 "\n" $3} tbd0allcopy.tab
>

The > symbols continue every time I press return.

[kman42]

When I do a more command on tbd0allcopy.tab I get the following:

225 namehere xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx^M444 name2here cccccccccccccccccccccccccc^M


etc...The fields obviously contain:
225
namehere
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
separated by tabs and a carriage return (^M) at the end of the line.

kman

[besson3c]

It looks like the file you are using is using WIndows carriage returns rather than Unix carriage returns, assuming that the ^M is appearing where there should be carriage returns. You'll first need to convert the file from Windows -> Unix CRs...

To do this:

awk '{ sub("\r$", ""); print }' winfile.txt > unixfile.txt

Lots of other ways to do this though:

How do I convert between Unix and Windows text files? - Knowledge Base

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by kman42 

Hmm...still not working for me. I get the following:

Code:
$ awk {'print ">$1,$2 "\n" $3} tbd0allcopy.tab
>

The > symbols continue every time I press return.

This is because you are missing the final ' mark after the $3.