Question

I have data printed out in the console like this:

A B C D E
1 2 3 4 5

I want to manipulate it so A:1 B:2 C:3 D:4 E:5 is printed.

What is the best way to go about it? Should I tokenize the two lines and then print it out using arrays?

How do I go about it in bash?

Answer 1

Awk is good for this.

awk 'NR==1{for(i=0;i<NF;i++){row[i]=$i}} NR==2{for(i=0;i<NF;i++){printf "%s:%s",row[i],$i}}' oldfile > newfile

A slightly more readable version for scripts:

#!/usr/bin/awk -f

NR == 1 {
    for(i = 0; i < NF; i++) {
        first_row[i] = $i
    }
}
NR == 2 {
    for(i = 0; i < NF; i++) {
        printf "%s:%s", first_row[i], $i
    }
    print ""
}

If you want it to scale vertically, you’ll have to say how.