Column

Align columns of text

suggests : transpose

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Utility to present columnar data nicely padded with spaces. A nice complement to transpose or any other text grabbing tabular results.

# man column
SYNOPSIS
     column [-tx] [-c columns] [-s sep] [file ...]
 
DESCRIPTION
    The column utility formats its input into multiple columns.  Rows are
     filled before columns.  Input is taken from file operands, or, by
     default, from the standard input.  Empty lines are ignored.
 
     The options are as follows:
 
     -c      Output is formatted for a display columns wide.
 
     -s      Specify a set of characters to be used to delimit columns for the
             -t option.
 
     -t      Determine the number of columns the input contains and create a
             table.  Columns are delimited with whitespace, by default, or
             with the characters supplied using the -s option.  Useful for
             pretty-printing displays.
 
     -x      Fill columns before filling rows.
BUG
      Input lines are limited to LINE_MAX (2048) bytes in length.

# create example data with one missing value
echo 'X column1 column2 column3
row1 0 1 2
row2 3 4 5
row3 6 7 8
row4 9  11' > ex.txt
 
# !!! the delimiter in this file is 'space' and not tab
 
# reformat with column
column -t  ex.txt
X     column1  column2  column3
row1  0        1        2
row2  3        4        5
row3  6        7        8
row4  9       11
 
# we lost the missing spot, lets get it back
column -t -n  ex.txt
X     column1  column2  column3
row1  0        1        2
row2  3        4        5
row3  6        7        8
row4  9                 11
 
# additional spaces have been added to make nicer columns
# try 'man column' for more options
 
# now replace spaces by tabs and transpose lines and columns (pivot | rotate)
tr "\ " "\t" < ex.txt | transpose -t
X	row1	row2	row3	row4
column1	0	3	6	9
column2	1	4	7	
column3	2	5	8	11
 
# try 'transpose --help' and read the transpose page

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