making 2 column data filr

[ovince]

hi

I have 1 file with this content

f1
g1
f2
g2
...
f10
g10

and I would like to make a file from it with this content

f1 g1
f2 g2
....
f10 g10

How to do it in easy way?

thanks
oliver

P.S.
I remember that I read somewhere that this is easily done with cat command. Something like

cat -2 fileName

but I can not find exactly how. Could somebody refresh my memory?

 

[Yarka]

hi,
for example you can do something as:
cat inputfile.txt | paste - - >> outputfile.txt

 

[ovince]

thanks for reply

what if I wanna make 20 column data? do I write like

paste -d ' ' - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ... FILENAME > NEWFILE

 

[ovince]

I ask this because I remember in cat the 'column number' can be given by number

 

[ovince]

found it


cat fileName | -n 20


will di the job

 

[PHV]

pr -a -20 -t -s' ' fileName > newFile

Hope This Helps, PH.
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