Reputation: 1389
I have a file that contains several lines of data. Some lines contain three columns, but most contain only two. All lines are single-tab separated. For those that contain three columns, the third column is typically redundant and contains the same data as the second so I'd like to remove it.
I imagine awk or cut would be appropriate, but I'm drawing a blank on how to test the row for three columns so my script will only work on those rows. I know awk is a very powerful language with logic and whatnot built into it, I'm just not that strong with it.
I looked at a similar question, but I'm not sure what is going on with the awk answer. Should the -4 be -1 since I only want to remove one column? What about if the row has two columns; will it remove the second even though I don't want to do anything?
I modified it to what I think it would be:
awk -F"\t" -v OFS="\t" '{ for (i=1;i<=NF-4;i++){ print $i }}'
But when I run it (with the file) nothing happens. If I change NF-1 or NF-2 I get some output, but it only a handful of lines and only the first column.
Can anyone clue me into what I should be doing?
Upvotes: 0
Views: 2806
Reputation: 67319
awk 'NF==3{print $1"\t"$2}NF==2{print}' your_file
Testde below:
> cat temp
1 2
3 4 5
6 7
8 9 10
>
> awk 'NF==3{print $1"\t"$2}NF==2{print}' temp
1 2
3 4
6 7
8 9
>
or in a much more simplere way in awk:
awk 'NF==3{print $1"\t"$2}NF==2' your_file
Or you can also go with perl:
perl -lane 'print "$F[0]\t$F[1]"' your_file
Upvotes: 0
Reputation: 72855
The awk variable NF
gives you the number for fields. So an expression like this should work for you.
awk -F, 'NF == 3 {print $1 "," $2} NF != 3 {print $0}'
Running it on an input file like so
a,b,c
x,y
u,v,w
l,m
gives me
$ cat test | awk -F, 'NF == 3 {print $1 "," $2} NF != 3 {print $0}'
a,b
x,y
u,v
l,m
Upvotes: 1
Reputation: 58578
This might work for you (GNU sed):
sed 's/\t[^\t]*//2g' file
Restricts the file to two columns.
Upvotes: 0
Reputation: 75628
If you just want to remove the third column, you could just print the first and the second:
awk -F '\t' '{print $1 "\t" $2}'
And it's similar to cut:
cut -f 1,2
Upvotes: 3