Combining columns of multiple files in one file

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Level 1

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Combining columns of multiple files in one file

I have several hundred text files that contain a lot of information. Each file has 3 columns (the first two are the same for all the files).

I need to merge the third column of all the files in a new file. And insert a column header with the name of the file from where the column belongs.

The txt files with the three columns like this:

-118.33333333333279 40.041666666667908 11.409999847412109

-118.29166666666612 40.041666666667908 11.090000152587891

-118.24999999999946 40.041666666667908 10.920000076293945

-118.20833333333279 40.041666666667908 10.949999809265137

The txt file I am trying to create should look like this:

Is this possible? I can't find a way to do so. Please help!!!

Pepo

MacBook Air, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Apr 14, 2014 7:27 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Frank Caggiano

Level 7

25,969 points

Apr 14, 2014 8:10 PM in response to Pepo

You say you have several hundred files with 3 columns of data in them. You want to take out the 3rd column from each file and create a new file that contains all the 3rd columns.

This seems to imply the output file will have several hundred columns in it. Is that correct?

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Answer 2

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Apr 14, 2014 10:44 PM in response to Pepo

for f in *
do paste ../output <(echo "      $f      "; cut -d\  -f3 "$f") > ../temp
mv ../temp ../output
done

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Answer 3

Pepo Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 14, 2014 11:13 PM in response to Frank Caggiano

Yes Frank that is correct, and I would also like to add a header to each column.

The header should be the name of the file from where the column was taken.

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