Insert column with awk or sed between two columns
 

Hi,

I have a two column file and I need to create a new column in between the first and second but the new column adds a value to the first. E.g.

I have this

2999904 51.1
2999905 53.3
2999906 55.7

But I need this

2999904 2999929 51.1
2999905 2999930 53.3
2999906 2999931 55.7

I thought I had figured out how to do it with the following but it just hangs:

awk -F '{print $0,$0+25,$1}' file_in > file_out

Also tried the following to no avail:

awk -F,-v OFS,'{print $0,$0+25,$1}' file_in > file_out

I can add the new column with the added value to the last column easy ( awk '{print $0,$0+25}' file_in > file_out).

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Might need to go and re-read your favourite awk website of man page.

$0 - The entire line up until the record separator

$1 - $NF - fields based on FS value

And I might need to get a degree in Computer Science...I've read the awk websites and they weren't much help - they're basically MAN pages, not detailed tutorials - which is why I posted this in the NEWBIE forum.

yeah, that was no help. Sorry. Thankfully it was only ~750,000 lines. I got what I needed in Excel in like 2 minutes. I'd still like to learn more about sed and awk by example because those MAN pages assume too much prior knowledge.

What grail is attempting to clarify, is that the first field is $1, the second is $2. $0 is the entire record.
Were you to simply update your variables in the first attempt above, you might be pleasantly surprised ... easier than excel by far.

The info manual for gawk is a book, Gawk: Effective Gawk Programming.

I downloaded the source and used it to produce a print worthy pdf document from the .texi source.

The O'Reilly Sed & Awk book is excellent.

Not sure which ones you looked at but this one seems to work for me.

I see no issue here seeing man is the bread and butter for linux users.
Had you bothered to search for 'fields' you would have found the following:
Again see answer 1 above

Which is why I was trying to educate and not spoon feed you an answer

Oh man, that was the difference. THAT was way faster than the alternative I used. Thanks syg00! You see, this is what I'm talking about with the manuals and guides, none of them made that clear. "0" is typically considered the first of whatever or so I was told by a programmer long ago. Sigh.

thanks for your assistance but with all due respect the best way to learn is by example/mimicry. You're VERY advanced. I'm not. I really had no idea what you meant. The man page you sent is more clear than the two I was reading. It was kind of like trying to learn German by reading der Speigel and only knowing a few German phrases.

I see gnu.org has a guide for sed, I'll read that one too :)

Insert column with awk or sed between two columns
 

awk '{ print $1,$1+=25,$2 }' abc

2999904 2999929 51.1
2999905 2999930 53.3
2999906 2999931 55.7