Hi,

I want to change the following output in tabular format..How can I do this?

Current output:

abc
100
def
200
ghi
300

But I want it in the following format, How can I implement this using shell script?

abc def ghi
100 200 300

Thanks!~
Kapoor

Hmm..perhaps there are some tips elsewhere in your school textbook that could help you.

This sounds very much like homework.

ditto--looks like homework.

g_kapoor; You need to tell us what you have tried, what books you are using in the class, etc.

I think this particular problem will involve one or more of the following commands:
sort
sed
awk

For "sort", the man page will give you what you need. For "sed" and "awk", try this: http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/

This is not a homework guys I was just trying to capture the output of a free command from 100 servers to an excel sheet. However, I want it in different columns instead of predefined format of free command.

I have acomplished it by redirecting ooutput to three different files using awk and pasting it to one file in tabular format and redirecting it which worked.

however, I thought it as a lengthy process to capture the outputs seperately and then pasting it That's why I asked this question hoping that some other trick will work.
Thanks!

OK!! Now we're talking!

My hunch is to first sort the list so it looks like this:
abc
def
ghi
100
200
300

Then--eg--you can use sed to combine groups of lines. Here is a start, based on the sorted list above:
sed -n -e '1,3H' -e '3{g;s/^\n//;s/\n/ /gp}' filename

slightly cleaner:
sed -n -e '1h' -e '2,3H' -e '3{g;s/\n/ /gp}' filename

Try (using GNU sed)
It needs an even number of input lines or it will reverse the order of the two output lines.

Or try
sed -n 'p;n' prints every second line starting with line 1.
sed -n 'n;p' prints every second line starting with line 2.
paste -sd' ' converts multiple lines into a single line with a space as the deliminater.