Rearrange columns using cut

Question

I am having a file in the following format

Column1    Column2
str1       1
str2       2
str3       3

I want the columns to be rearranged. I tried below

Answer 1

Using sed

Use sed with basic regular expression's nested subexpressions to capture and reorder the column content. This approach is best suited when there are a limited number of cuts to reorder columns, as in this case.

The basic idea is to surround interesting portions of the search pattern with \( and \), which can be played back in the replacement pattern with \# where # represents the sequential position of the subexpression in the search pattern.

For example:

$ echo "foo bar" | sed "s/\(foo\) \(bar\)/\2 \1/"

yields:

bar foo

Text outside a subexpression is scanned but not retained for playback in the replacement string.

Although the question did not discuss fixed width columns, we will discuss here as this is a worthy measure of any solution posed. For simplicity let's assume the file is space delimited although the solution can be extended for other delimiters.

Collapsing Spaces

To illustrate the simplest usage, let's assume that multiple spaces can be collapsed into single spaces, and the the second column values are terminated with EOL (and not space padded).

File:

bash-3.2$ cat f
Column1    Column2
str1       1
str2       2
str3       3
bash-3.2$ od -a f
0000000    C   o   l   u   m   n   1  sp  sp  sp  sp   C   o   l   u   m
0000020    n   2  nl   s   t   r   1  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp   1  nl
0000040    s   t   r   2  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp   2  nl   s   t   r
0000060    3  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp   3  nl 
0000072

Transform:

bash-3.2$ sed "s/\([^ ]*\)[ ]*\([^ ]*\)[ ]*/\2 \1/" f
Column2 Column1
1 str1
2 str2
3 str3
bash-3.2$ sed "s/\([^ ]*\)[ ]*\([^ ]*\)[ ]*/\2 \1/" f | od -a
0000000    C   o   l   u   m   n   2  sp   C   o   l   u   m   n   1  nl
0000020    1  sp   s   t   r   1  nl   2  sp   s   t   r   2  nl   3  sp
0000040    s   t   r   3  nl
0000045

Preserving Column Widths

Let's now extend the method to a file with constant width columns, while allowing columns to be of differing widths.

File:

bash-3.2$ cat f2
Column1    Column2
str1       1
str2       2
str3       3
bash-3.2$ od -a f2
0000000    C   o   l   u   m   n   1  sp  sp  sp  sp   C   o   l   u   m
0000020    n   2  nl   s   t   r   1  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp   1  sp
0000040   sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  nl   s   t   r   2  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp
0000060   sp   2  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  nl   s   t   r   3  sp  sp  sp
0000100   sp  sp  sp  sp   3  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  nl
0000114

Transform:

bash-3.2$ sed "s/\([^ ]*\)\([ ]*\) \([^ ]*\)\([ ]*\)/\3\4 \1\2/" f2
Column2 Column1
1       str1      
2       str2      
3       str3      
bash-3.2$ sed "s/\([^ ]*\)\([ ]*\) \([^ ]*\)\([ ]*\)/\3\4 \1\2/" f2 | od -a
0000000    C   o   l   u   m   n   2  sp   C   o   l   u   m   n   1  sp
0000020   sp  sp  nl   1  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp   s   t   r   1  sp
0000040   sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  nl   2  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp   s   t
0000060    r   2  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  nl   3  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp
0000100   sp   s   t   r   3  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  nl 
0000114

Lastly although the question's example does not have strings of unequal length, this sed expression support this case.

File:

bash-3.2$ cat f3
Column1    Column2
str1       1      
string2    2      
str3       3      

Transform:

bash-3.2$ sed "s/\([^ ]*\)\([ ]*\) \([^ ]*\)\([ ]*\)/\3\4 \1\2/" f3
Column2 Column1   
1       str1      
2       string2   
3       str3    
bash-3.2$ sed "s/\([^ ]*\)\([ ]*\) \([^ ]*\)\([ ]*\)/\3\4 \1\2/" f3 | od -a
0000000    C   o   l   u   m   n   2  sp   C   o   l   u   m   n   1  sp
0000020   sp  sp  nl   1  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp   s   t   r   1  sp
0000040   sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  nl   2  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp   s   t
0000060    r   i   n   g   2  sp  sp  sp  nl   3  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp
0000100   sp   s   t   r   3  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  sp  nl 
0000114

Comparison to other methods of column reordering under shell

• Surprisingly for a file manipulation tool, awk is not well-suited for cutting from a field to end of record. In sed this can be accomplished using regular expressions, e.g. \(xxx.*$\) where xxx is the expression to match the column.

• Using paste and cut subshells gets tricky when implementing inside shell scripts. Code that works from the commandline fails to parse when brought inside a shell script. At least this was my experience (which drove me to this approach).