Hello All,

I have a folder containing few files. Each & every file contain only 1 column.

I want to combine only column of all the files through GAWK, separate them by a delimiter and store it to a new file.

So basically using GAWK, I want to combine '$1' of all files, separate them by a delimiter and save it in a file:
i.e. '$1:$1:$1:$1:$1.....'

Have you tried paste? Heckuva lot easier...

I think I missed out one information....

Although all the files have 1 column but that 1 column may have multiple rows but number of rows in all the rows will remain same...

Ok got paste to serve the purpose...

However I was actually combining windows file format files which had windows specific line break characters. As a result of which columns were not visible on same row...

Hence had to convert the result file to unix file as shown below:

I have few more questions:

1. If I want to use tab as the delimiter then I guess following should be sufficient but somehow its not giving the desired results:
Any pointers?

2. Is there a way I can use a long single delimiter like '##--##' or may be '&+&+&'
I tried following but it doesn't seem to work.
Any idea?

Ok got the answers -

1. Need to execute without '-d' to use default delimiter as 'tab'

2. I think following hack will do the trick....

Changing FS as I am interested in the space characters after the columns otherwise GAWK will trim the white spaces...

Advantage of this is that there no need use 'tr' to remove line break characters - GAWK takes of care of it...