formatting with bash and column command line

Question

I have the following file

100843      stars n30   2012-03-08  spartanico83
    stars n50   2009-11-28  babepy
    stars n05   2009-03-09  sandfox
    stars n20   2014-01-17  yeuce

My aim is to have that:

100843      stars n30   2012-03-08  spartanico83
            stars n50   2009-11-28  babepy
            stars n05   2009-03-09  sandfox
            stars n20   2014-01-17  yeuce

I have tried to use column -t as a command line but it gives me that

100843     stars n30   2012-03-08  spartanico83
stars n50  2009-11-28  babepy
stars n05  2009-03-09  sandfox
stars n20  2014-01-17  yeuce

Should I use a combination of awk and sed as well?

Thanks

Answer 1

Put a tab with sed:

sed 's/^\([ ]*stars\)/\t\1/' input

or use sed/column for a more robust solution:

sed 's/^\([ \t]*stars\)/@\1/' input | column -t | sed 's/^@/ /'

Answer 2

This can be done just using sed:

sed -r 's/^ +/            /'

If the line begins with spaces, replace the initial spaces with 12 spaces.