Re^4: selecting columns from a tab-separated-values file

[Lotus1]

You can't reorder the output fields with 'cut'

Isn't that what I just said? Maybe you intended to reply to mildside.

...if you have 'sed' you can do this...

I have sed but I prefer Perl.

update: So I couldn't resist trying this sed command and found that it works for the input provided but as soon as you add more fields at the end it breaks.

Given this input file:

FIRST    MIDDLE    LAST    STRNO        CITY    STATE    ZIP    1    2
+    3    4    5
FIRST    MIDDLE    LAST    STRNO        CITY    STATE    ZIP    1    2
+    3    4
FIRST    MIDDLE    LAST    STRNO        CITY    STATE    ZIP

You get this output:

ZIP    FIRST    MIDDLE    LAST    STRNO        CITY    3    
STATE    FIRST    MIDDLE    LAST    STRNO        2    
LAST    FIRST    CITY

The greedy '.*' regex expressions cause the regex engine to match from the right and work back. '\1' ends up holding everything on the left that remains unmatched. For the first line \1 holds FIRST    MIDDLE    LAST    STRNO        CITY.

Here is a version that works.

C:\b\perlmonks\commands>sed -n "s/^\([^\t]*\t\)[^\t]*\t\([^\t]*\t\)[^\
+t]*\t[^\t]*\t\([^\t]*\).*/\2\1\3/p" sedtest.csv 
LAST    FIRST    CITY
LAST    FIRST    CITY
LAST    FIRST    CITY