File content formatting in Bash

Question

Its my first time posting in Stackoverflow, so please understand if my question is not clear.

In bash, I am trying to manipulate the file content. Essentially, I want to go from

AA123

AA123

BB123

BB123

CC123

CC123

to

AA123    AA123 

BB123    BB123

CC123    CC123

The space between duplicate words is tab delimited

Basically, unique string appears every 2n+1 line (n>=0) in the original file, and I want to move the "2n"th line to the previous line.

How can I accomplish this in Bash???

I am sorry if the description is too abstract, but please bear with me,,,

Thank you everyone

p.s. Number of unique string can be any number, but will always occur as a pair

Try using `column`. You can learn about it with `man column`. — Eli Sadoff, Nov 02 '16 at 20:42
It would be great if you can write the code for me as I am not familiar with Bash.. — djskj189, Nov 02 '16 at 20:45
See this question http://stackoverflow.com/q/9605232/1741542, there are many answers. — Olaf Dietsche, Nov 02 '16 at 20:46

Cyrus · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-02T20:47:35.613

1

With GNU or BSD bash:

printf "%s\t%s\n\n" $(< file)

Output:

AA123   AA123

BB123   BB123

CC123   CC123

edited Nov 02 '16 at 20:47

answered Nov 02 '16 at 20:45

Cyrus

This one doesnt work for some reason,,, I tried using: printf "%s\t%s\n\n" test.txt, and it outputted test.txt. I'm using Centos 7 if that helps,,, – djskj189 Nov 02 '16 at 20:57
Replace `test.txt` by `$(< test.txt)`. – Cyrus Nov 02 '16 at 20:59

1 Answers1