join columns from many files with the same structure using awk 2

[babcia01]

I have x number of files which are named using constistent naming convention mmdd.file (where mm is a month number and dd is a day number, "file" is a constant.

What is the best way to approach the following:

I will explain it by using this example:

0723.file contains the following tab delimited columns:

row1_col1_in_0723.file row1_col2_in_0723.file
row2_col1_in_0723.file row2_col2_in_0723.file
:

0724.file contains the following tab delimited columns:
row1_col1_in_0724.file row1_col2_in_0724.file
row2_col1_in_0724.file row2_col2_in_0724.file
:

In my output file, I want to have the following:
row1_col2_in_0723.file row1_col2_in_0724.file
row2_col2_in_0723.file row2_col2_in_0724.file
:
Thank you very much

 

[CaKiwi]

Try this script

{
  printf $2 " "
  getline < &quot;-&quot;
  print $2
}

Put it in a file, join.awk say, and enter

awk -f join.awk 0723.file < 0724.file > new.file CaKiwi

 

[CaKiwi]

Upon further review I see that you want to do this for many files, not just 2. The best way I can think of to do this is to use awk (or cut) to create a set of files with just the second column and then use paste to concatenate them. CaKiwi

 

[babcia01]

Thank you very much for your quick response.
Before I asked my original question, I developed something like this, which is working:

for i in `ls *.file`
{
sed 1d &quot;$i&quot;|awk '{print $2}' > &quot;$i&quot;.new
}
paste *.new

I also, needed to delete first line. I thought that this is not too efficient and &quot;nice&quot; looking and creates unnecessary files.
I though that may be there is some other way with getline/nextfile.
I am glad that I concluded the same solution, which you suggested, although, before I did it, I spent too much time until I found this useful &quot;paste&quot; command.
Thank you once again for your suggestions.

 

[dchoulette]

Just read all files in awk and append the field 2 of each line to an array element whose index is the number of the line in the file (FNR = current File Number of Record). To get rid of the first line of each file just do not print the array element whose index is 1. The

substr

is use to remove the &quot; &quot; char added at start of each line by the concatenation command (

string[FNR] " " $2

).

awk '
{
  string[FNR] = string[FNR] " " $2;
  if (maxFNR < FNR) maxFNR = FNR;
}
END {
  for (i = 2; i <= maxFNR; i++)
    print substr(string[i], 2);
}' *.file

 

[babcia01]

Thanks a lot for the 100 % correct and working solution.
What a great site!