Question

Ok, this question is two-fold: 1) The actual file manupulation bit 2) Looping this manipulation in unix

Part 1)

I have two files:

File_1

a b
c d
e f
g h

and File_2

A B
C D
E F
G H
I J

i would like to get (in the first instance) the following result:

a b
A B
>
c d
A B
>
e f
A B
>
g h
A B

…and save this output to outfile1.

I gather I would have to use things like awk, cut and/or paste but I can’t manage to put it all together.

Part 2)

I then want to loop this manipulation for all rows in File_2 (note that the number of rows in File_1 is not the same as in File_2), such that I end up with 5 output files, where outfile2 would be:

a b
C D
>
c d
C D
>
e f
C D
>
g h
C D

and outfile3 would be:

a b
E F
>
c d
E F
>
e f
E F
>
g h
E F

etc.

At the moment I’m working in bash. Thank you in advance for any help!

Answer 1

to make outfile_3(with E F) for example:

x=$(sed -n '3p' File_2)
awk "{ printf \"%s\\n%s\\n>\\n\", \$0, \"$x\" }" File_1 > outfile_3

in first line '3p' cuts 3-rd line
Now let’s do it in a loop:

(( i = 1 ))
while read line
do
  awk "{ printf \"%s\\n%s\\n>\\n\", \$0, \"$line\" }" File_1 > "outfile_$i"
  (( i++ ))
done < File_2