I want to extract particular column from the file, column number is given in different file using shell scripting?

Question

I want to extract particular column from the file1 by comparing with file2 in which column number is given that should be extracted from file1.

File 1 (source data) look like this:

  1  2  3  4  5 10 11 14  
  13 25 37 2 4 7  9 23  
  12  12 23 15 17 18 24 25

File 2 (with the column numbers to extract):

  2  
  4  
  5

So I want to compare both file1 and file2. Using file 2 I want to extract columne number 2,4,5 from file1.

Desired output:

  2 4 5  
  25 2 4  
  12 15 17  

How can I proceed for that?

Answer 1

Try also

awk '
FNR == NR       {COL[NR] = $1                   # get column numbers from file2
                 MX = NR                        # retain max line No. in file2
                 next
                }
                {for (i=1; i<=MX; i++)  printf "%s%s", $(COL[i]), (i==MX)?ORS:OFS
                                                # print those columns, and field
                                                # or line separator
                }
' file2 file1
2 4 5
25 2 4
12 15 17

Answer 2

With Perl:

perl -pale '$"="\t";
   chomp(@A = map { $_-1 } grep { /^[1-9]\d*$/m } <STDIN>) if $. == 1;
   $_ = @A ? "@F[@A]" : last;
' File1 < File2

Result:

2   4   5
25  2   4
12  15  17

Explanation:

Give the column numbers file (one column num per line) on the stdin to the perl utility and the data file on Perl's commandline.

Set the array element concatenator ($") to a TAB so that all output fields are TAB-separated.

Quit the program as soon as we detect that the array of columns to be printed, @A, is found to be empty. It only comprises those lines from File2 that have one positive integer per line. any other combination is rejected.