Question

Again, I have about 150 files with the following data with no header

x1 y1 z1

x2 y2 z2

…

zn yn zn

The delimiter happens to be tab key. How could I use sed and batch processing for these 150 files to achieve the following output:

x1

x2

x3

…

xn

y1

y2

y3

…

yn

z1

z2

z3

..

zn

Any ideas would be appreciated.

NOTE: I posted similar question before, not duplicate. Please see this link.

Regards,

ikel

Answer 1

I don’t think sed is the best tool for this job. The simplest solution that comes to mind simply involves using cut three times:

cut -f1 file && cut -f2 file && cut -f3 file

Contents of file:

x1  y1  z1
x2  y2  z2
x3  y3  z3
xn  yn  zn

Results:

x1
x2
x3
xn
y1
y2
y3
yn
z1
z2
z3
zn

For batch processing your files assuming you only have the files of interest in your present working directory:

for i in *; do 
    cut -f1 "$i" >> "$i.bak"
    cut -f2 "$i" >> "$i.bak"
    cut -f3 "$i" >> "$i.bak"

    mv "$i.bak" "$i"
done