Split and print

Question

I have tab-demlimted text file with 50,000lines. I want to split the first column and print as shown in output.txt

Input.txt

rt|371443144|mb|MN556661.1|  2200443     A
rt|371443344|mb|MN556645.1|  2594155     A
rt|371467899|mb|MN555666.1|  2594175     A

output.txt

MN556661.1   2200443     A
MN556645.1   2594155     A
MN555666.1   2594175     A

Answer 1

cat input.txt | awk -F\| '{print $4      $5    $6}' >> output.txt

Answer 2

You could do it like this with GNU sed:

sed -r 's/([^|]+\|){3}//; s/\|//'

i.e. delete three groups preceded by pipes, the second substitute command removes pipe after the 4th field.

Answer 3

An alternative with cut would be:

cut input.txt -d'|' -f4-5 --output-delimiter='' >> output.txt

By the way, you mentioned in the question that it is tab delimited, but I took the | here as delimiter.