Layout tab/spaces

Question

I've read this thread https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/7718/256195, that only if var doesn't contain any tab/spaces but in my case it does contain spaces, like below example:

"this is a test"      this_is_a_solid_line_that_doesnot_contain_tab_or_spaces

command column will separate this is ..etc also, but I'd want something acts on only "this is a test" and this_is_a_solid_line_that_doesnot_contain_tab_or_spaces.

Purpose: I have a bunch of lines like above in a file that don't be aligned properly.

Possibly of some help (if the fields are tab-delimited): Align columns evenly without "column - t" — Kusalananda, Nov 29 '18 at 07:56
Thanks, what would it be when I'm using pipeline like: cat file | somethine_here_to_filter, what would your script will be put after a pipeline? — Tuyen Pham, Nov 29 '18 at 08:00
The shell script in the second half of my answer expects a filename, so ./script.sh file. To make it work on a pipe, use something-that-produces-data | ./script.sh /dev/stdin. — Kusalananda, Nov 29 '18 at 08:05
@Kusalananda: I tried but with var1 test it produces "var1.................................................................test" that somehow treat spaces as tab. — Tuyen Pham, Nov 29 '18 at 08:32
Nobody yet knows what delimiter your input uses, and I don't know what command you have tried. — Kusalananda, Nov 29 '18 at 08:39

Stéphane Chazelas · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-29T08:11:48.263

2

Assuming the input doesn't contain | characters, you could convert those sequences of whitespace that are not inside quotes to | (or any other character that doesn't occur in the input) and then pipe to column -ts'|':

<input.txt perl -lpe 's/(".*?")|\s+/$1||"|"/ge' | column -ts'|'

edited Nov 29 '18 at 08:11

answered Nov 29 '18 at 08:07

Stéphane Chazelas

544,893

This is golden. I've just tested against this and achieved the question in simple and elegant way. – Tuyen Pham Nov 29 '18 at 08:11

Layout tab/spaces

1 Answers1