Very Basic: replace value flanked by tabs
 

I should know how to do this, but I'm very new to unix.

I have a table of data, which is tab delimited. I need something, preferably sed, that will delete the 2nd value here, while preserving the placeholder:

3 1 1.0 0.10 0.1 1.0e-1 1.0010

to this

3 1.0 0.10 0.1 1.0e-1 1.0010


Thanks for helping a newb-

Give this a try:

cheers

says unterminated command

Simple, but not very flexible---e.g it does not adapt well to changing any field.

Why not AWK? Simply print the fields you want, and print your placeholder (I used a space) for the ones you don't want.


PS: Have you read the material suggested in your earlier thread?

Edited my post above due to a typo, sorry.. didn't test it

And again! geez... you should always test !

Here's a working one:

Output:

For some reason was unable to get either of the above suggestions to work.

However, this works except on values at the beginning or end of the line:

sed -r 's/(\t)1(\t)/\1\2/g'

I tried this to replace the ones the beginning, but it didn't work:

sed -r 's/(\t|^)1(\t)/\1\2/g'

Does anyone have a solution to this problem??


The reason why I'd prefer sed is because I know the syntax a little, whereas with awk, I don't know it at all. But if there's an easy awk solution, then by all means please share. :)

Ended up using this:

sed -r 's/(\t)1(\t)/\1\2/g' | sed -r 's/^1(\t)/\1/g' | sed -r 's/(\t)1$/\1/g'

Note: I've actually inserted TABs where you had spaces.



Cheers,
Tink

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