Combine count files into one file and keep zero values

Question

I have multiple count files that look like this:

 File1.tab
 6       10      0
 49      0       53
 15      0       15
 0       0       0
 0       0       0
 0       0       0

Other file:

File2.tab
 3       1       2
 29      0       29
 4       0       4
 0       0       0
 0       0       0
 0       0       0

I have over 30 files and I want to combine the second column of each file into one big file.

I know this question have already been asked and I found a similar here How to combine column from multiple text files?

I used the answer from previous question for my problem:

paste  *.tab | awk '{i=2;while($i); {printf("%d ",$i);i+=3}printf("\n")}'

The problem is that zero values are not printed, I get something like this:

10 1

and I want something like this:

I cheked the printf format specifiers, but none works. How can I solve this problem?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 13 '17 at 23:10

1

You picked a bad "answer" to build on. Try this:

paste  *.tab |
awk '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i+=3) printf "%s%s", (i>2?OFS:""), $i; print ""}'

answered Dec 13 '17 at 23:10

Ed Morton

1

thanks Ed Morton. Your answer works. Could you explain more about the code? – Leonor Dec 13 '17 at 23:19
this part (i>2?OFS:"") – Leonor Dec 14 '17 at 00:45
its a ternary opeartor (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%3F:). It puts the OFS value in front of the current field for every field after the first one. – Ed Morton Dec 14 '17 at 01:37

1 Answers1