shell script/command for converting columns/table onto a single line
 

Hi all,

I'm after a command, or a sequence of commands that can help me convert values in a table (columns and rows) to values on a single line. The number of columns in the input file is always the same but the number of rows can vary.

eg

The table might look like the following:

A B C
D E F
G H I
J K L

I need the information to be output onto a single line that looks like the following.

A B C D E F G H I J K L

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

"echo" is doing this job.

that is fu@King brilliant.

thank you very much

I ended up using the echo command in my script. It took two lines instead of one but I prefer the simplicity. I did the following.

I'm really only beginning with shell scripts so I reckon I'll be using the more basic commands at first.

You probably should be using 'cat' instead of 'more'.

file=$(<yourfile)

The "cat file | tr '\n' ' ' >newfile" example will add a space after the last item if the last lines ends with a newline as is apt to be the case.
The 2nd post isn't taking the input from a file.
The "file=$(<yourfile); echo $file < newfile" example works perfectly.

I think the 2nd post showing the difference between $a and "$a" and the later one completed it by entering the file into a variable:
a=$(<temp)
~> echo "$a" >newfile
A B C
D E F
G H I
K L M
N O P
~> echo $a >newfile
A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P

Using an intermediary variable may be unnecessary:

if it's not too large
xargs < file will do it too,

of course you need to be careful if the file has meta-characters in it