Re: Manipulating file content

[Will Trillich <will@serensoft.com>]

On Wed, Jun 28, 2000 at 02:37:33PM -0500, Bolan Meek wrote:
> Viktor Rosenfeld wrote:
> > 
> > Hi list,
> > 
> > this one is for all the regexp, shell, and editing-experts...
> 
> How about us perl hackers, hunh?!  Got sumpin' g'inst us, buddy!?

seems to me, us perl folk are the culmination of the cross-breeding
of all those geni. not that that's a good thing... :)

> > Suppose I have a comma-seperated or tab-seperated file and I want
> > to flip the lines and columns.  So an input file like:
> > 
> >         a,1,A
> >         b,2,B
> >         c,3,C
> > 
> > would be transformed into:
> > 
> >         a,b,c
> >         1,2,3
> >         A,B,C
> > 
> > Is there an fast and easy way of doing this?  Ideally through the shell
> > or with VIM.  I would RTFM, but I have no clue which manual to read.

this is the kind of thing perl was designed for.

[OT in a large way]

i'd try something like (tmtowtdi):

	#!/usr/bin/perl
	$sep = shift || "\t"; # can supply separator on cmd line
	@ary = (); # for peace of mind
	for ($ln=0; <>; $ln++) {
		chomp;
		$fn = 0;
		foreach (split(/$sep/o)) {
			$ary[ $fn++ ][ $ln ] = $_;
			#$ary[<col>][<row>] == val
		}
	}
	print join("\n", map {join($sep,@$_)} @ary ),"\n";

alarmingly, it even seems to work well on mismatched tables
such as
	a	b	c
	1	2	3	4	5
	i	ii
	A	B	C	D