converting four columns to two using linux commands

Question

I am wondering how one could merge four columns into two in the following manner (using the awk command, or other possible commands).

For example,

Old:

A B C D 
E F G H
I J K L 
M N O P 
.
.
.

New:

A B 
C D 
E F
G H  
I J  
K L  
M N  
O P 
.  
.

Thanks so much!

related: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20608501/print-every-4-columns-to-one-row-in-perl-or-awk — kvantour, Nov 27 '18 at 10:26

paxdiablo · Answer 1 · 2018-11-27T01:00:41.627

2

That's actually quite easy with awk, as per the following transcript:

pax> cat inputFile
A B C D
E F G H

pax> awk '{printf "%s %s\n%s %s\n", $1, $2, $3, $4}' <inputFile
A B
C D
E F
G H

edited Nov 27 '18 at 01:00

answered Nov 27 '18 at 00:37

paxdiablo

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 27 '18 at 02:51

2

Hww about using xargs here? Could you please try following once.

xargs -n 2 < Input_file

Output will be as follows.

A B
C D
E F
G H
I J
K L
M N
O P

answered Nov 27 '18 at 02:51

RavinderSingh13

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 27 '18 at 03:07

1

with GNU sed

$ sed 's/ /\n/2' file

replace 2nd space with new line.

answered Nov 27 '18 at 03:07

karakfa

3 Answers3