Use SED or AWK to move string to new column and row

Question

I have a .csv file that is tab delimited and I need to move the header row information to a "new" column at the beginning and a specified numbers of rows down. I would like to use standard tools that I currently use such as sed or awk but if another tool/method is more appropriate I would welcome the suggestion. The header changes per file, that's why I need to copy it instead of just placing the string "CAT" in the appropriate row and column.

                            CAT
    DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
    DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
    DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
    DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG

Would become:

                            CAT
            DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
            DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
    CAT     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
            DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG

Answer 1

paste can also make it:

edited

This prints the first line again. Taking advantage of the lack of quotes, the trailing spaces are not showing:

$ paste -d"\t" <(printf "\n\n\n%s" $(head -1 file)) file
                                    CAT
            DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
            DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
CAT         DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
            DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG

original

$ -d"\t" <(printf "\n\n\nCAT") file
                                    CAT
            DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
            DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
CAT         DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
            DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG

Answer 2

The following sed command works for me:

sed '1!s/^/\t/;4s/^/CAT/' 

Interpretation:

On the lines other than number 1, replace the beginning of the line with a tab. On the fourth line, replace the beginning of the line with the CAT string.

Answer 3

You could use sed as follows I think:

1. save the first line into the hold space
2. prepend an extra tab (column) from line #2 onward (this preserves the original column alignment of the header)
3. at a specified following line (I used line #4 in the example below), swap the hold back into pattern space, strip whitespace from it, and prepend it to the line

$ sed -e '1h' -e '2,$s/^/\t/' -e '4{x;s/[[:space:]]//g;G;s/\n//}' file
                                CAT
                DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
                DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
    CAT         DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
                DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG

Answer 4

You could try this awk command also.

$ awk 'NR==1{var=$1} {sub (/^     /,"            ");} NR==4{ sub (/^ +/,""); $0="    "var"     "$0}1' file
                                    CAT                        
            DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
            DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
    CAT     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG
            DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG     DOG

It fetches the string on the first row and then append the same string at the beginning of line 4.

Answer 5

Using awk:

awk -v line=4 -F '^\t*|\t+' '
  NR==1 { OFS="\t"; ins=$2 }
  NR!=line { print "","",$0 }
  NR==line { print "",ins,$0 }' file

This will use the first non-blank field of the header line as the text to insert, so it can have any text apart from a tab or newline. The field separator is set up so that this is always read as the second field in awk.