2

I want to extract particular column from the file1 by comparing with file2 in which column number is given that should be extracted from file1.

File 1 (source data) look like this:

  1  2  3  4  5 10 11 14  
  13 25 37 2 4 7  9 23  
  12  12 23 15 17 18 24 25

File 2 (with the column numbers to extract):

  2  
  4  
  5

So I want to compare both file1 and file2. Using file 2 I want to extract columne number 2,4,5 from file1.

Desired output:

  2 4 5  
  25 2 4  
  12 15 17

How can I proceed for that?

AdminBee
  • 22,803
claudia smith
  • 65
  • 4

2 Answers2

3

Try also

awk '
FNR == NR       {COL[NR] = $1                   # get column numbers from file2
                 MX = NR                        # retain max line No. in file2
                 next
                }
                {for (i=1; i<=MX; i++)  printf "%s%s", $(COL[i]), (i==MX)?ORS:OFS
                                                # print those columns, and field
                                                # or line separator
                }
' file2 file1
2 4 5
25 2 4
12 15 17
RudiC
  • 8,969
  • This is exactly the right way to do it. – Ed Morton Jan 22 '20 at 14:44
  • @RudiC same problem is coming in your script. It is working if file 2 has some number to compare. But If file 2 is blank then it printing full file 1 as out put file. While it should write zero. – claudia smith Jan 22 '20 at 16:18
  • Just change COL[NR] = $1; MX = NR to if (/[0-9]/) COL[++MX] = $1. That'll skip any lines in file2 that don't contain a field number. – Ed Morton Jan 22 '20 at 17:54
  • it is also not working, giving a same result – claudia smith Jan 23 '20 at 04:07
  • Difficult to believe. With Ed Morton's adaption, empty or non-numeric lines - which would result in a $0 (complete line) printout - are rejected. – RudiC Jan 23 '20 at 20:47
1

With Perl:

perl -pale '$"="\t";
   chomp(@A = map { $_-1 } grep { /^[1-9]\d*$/m } <STDIN>) if $. == 1;
   $_ = @A ? "@F[@A]" : last;
' File1 < File2

Result:

2   4   5
25  2   4
12  15  17

Explanation:

Give the column numbers file (one column num per line) on the stdin to the perl utility and the data file on Perl's commandline.

Set the array element concatenator ($") to a TAB so that all output fields are TAB-separated.

Quit the program as soon as we detect that the array of columns to be printed, @A, is found to be empty. It only comprises those lines from File2 that have one positive integer per line. any other combination is rejected.

Rakesh Sharma
  • 66