Convert Row to Column in shell

Question

I am in need of converting the below in multiple files. Text need not be same, but will be in the same format and length

File 1:

XXXxx81511
XXX is Present
abcdefg
07/09/2014
YES
1
XXX
XXX-XXXX

File 2:

XXXxx81511
XXX is Present
abcdefg
07/09/2014
YES
1
XXX
XXX-XXXX

TO

XXXxx81511,XXX is Present,abcdefg,07/09/2014,YES,1,XXXXXX-XXXX

XXXxx81511,XXX is Present,abcdefg,07/09/2014,YES,1,XXXXXX-XXXX

Basically converting row to column and appending to a new file while adding commas to separate them.

I am trying cat filename | tr '\n' ',' but the results do get added in the same line. like this

XXXxx81511,XXX is Present,abcdefg,07/09/2014,YES,1,XXXXXX-XXXX,XXXxx81511,XXX is Present,abcdefg,07/09/2014,YES,1,XXXXXX-XXXX

clt60 · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-22T11:15:36.050

4

Use:

paste -sd, file1 file2 .... fileN
#e.g.
paste -sd, *.txt file*

prints

XXXxx81511,XXX is Present,abcdefg,07/09/2014,YES,1,XXX,XXX-XXXX
XXXxx81511,XXX is Present,abcdefg,07/09/2014,YES,1,XXX,XXX-XXXX

and if you need the empty line after each one

paste -sd, file* | sed G

prints

XXXxx81511,XXX is Present,abcdefg,07/09/2014,YES,1,XXX,XXX-XXXX

XXXxx81511,XXX is Present,abcdefg,07/09/2014,YES,1,XXX,XXX-XXXX

Short perl variant:

perl -pe 'eof||s|$/|,|' files....

edited Sep 22 '14 at 11:15

answered Sep 22 '14 at 10:09

clt60

Brilliant. Worked just fine. Very very Simple.Wish i could vote up, but i dont have reps. – user1659329 Sep 22 '14 at 10:40

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 22 '14 at 10:00

1

You need to insert an echo after tr. Use a script like this:

for f in file1 file2; do
    tr '\n' ',' < "$f"; echo
done > files.output

answered Sep 22 '14 at 10:00

anubhava

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:33

0

Use a for loop:

for f in file*; do sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/,/g' < $f; done

The sed code was taken from sed: How can I replace a newline (\n)?. tr '\n' ',' didn't work on my limited test setup.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:33

Community

answered Sep 22 '14 at 10:07

Burkart

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 22 '14 at 10:11

perl -ne 'chomp; print $_ . (($. % 8) ? "," : "\n")' f*

where:

-n reads the file line by line but doesn't print each line
-e executes the code from the command line
8 number of lines in each file
f* glob for files (replace with something that will select all your files). If you need a specific order, you will probably need something more complicated here.

4 Answers4