Question

I have two files.

file1 has the data like belowing containing only one column.

112.319
108.915
105.512

file2 has the data like belowing containing eight columns.

0.000000     0.000     0.000     0.000     0.000         0     0.0001.0000E+20  
0.000000     0.000     0.000     0.000 20.000000         0     0.0001.0000E+20  
0.000000     0.000     0.000     0.000 20.000000         0     0.0001.0000E+20 

I want to replace the first column of file2 with the first column of file1 and the output would be

112.319     0.000     0.000     0.000     0.000         0     0.0001.0000E+20  
108.915     0.000     0.000     0.000 20.000000         0     0.0001.0000E+20  
105.512     0.000     0.000     0.000 20.000000         0     0.0001.0000E+20

I tried to replace the first record of each line with the first record of other line but was not successful. I would be thankful if somebody can help me doing is using sed.

best regards.

Answer 1

join -o 1.2,2.3,2.4,2.5,2.6,2.7,2.8 <(cat -n file1) <(cat -n file2) | column -t

produces

112.319  0.000  0.000  0.000  0.000      0  0.0001.0000E+20
108.915  0.000  0.000  0.000  20.000000  0  0.0001.0000E+20
105.512  0.000  0.000  0.000  20.000000  0  0.0001.0000E+20

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Update: since the whitespace is significant, you can use string replacements. Here’s awk:

awk 'NR==FNR {n[FNR]=$1; next} {sub(/[^[:space:]]+/, n[FNR]); print}' f1 f2

producing

112.319     0.000     0.000     0.000     0.000         0     0.0001.0000E+20
108.915     0.000     0.000     0.000 20.000000         0     0.0001.0000E+20
105.512     0.000     0.000     0.000 20.000000         0     0.0001.0000E+20