awk: printing a tab-delimited instead of a space-delimited file

Question

I am using this awk command to print out certain columns of a file

awk '{print $1,$2,$3,$5,log($11),$12}' inputfile > outputfile

The inputfile is tab-delimited, and the outputfile is space-delimited. I need the outputfile to be tab-delimited as well. I tried this, but this still gives me a space-delimited file:

awk 'BEGIN{FS="\t"}{print $1,$2,$3,$5,log($11),$12}' inputfile > outputfile

What am I doing wrong? Many thanks!

piojo · Accepted Answer · 2022-10-23T02:53:19.717

12

I think you want BEGIN { OFS="\t" }, to set only the output field separator.

edited Oct 23 '22 at 02:53

answered Jul 28 '17 at 09:39

piojo

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For other beginners like me, this needs to go in the BEGIN block like so: `BEGIN {OFS="\t"}`. – Bryan Rink Oct 22 '22 at 21:20
Thanks @BryanRink, I've incorporated that into my answer. – piojo Oct 23 '22 at 02:53

awk: printing a tab-delimited instead of a space-delimited file

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