Re: printing columns into a file

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Jin <kyeunjin@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> I will really appreciate any help on this!
>
> I have a file looking like the following
>
> date        month           year
>
> 12              5                1982
> 30              6               1982
>                   3               1982
> 28                               1877
> 30              2                1888
>
> As you can see, my file has blanks in a column, but I like to keep it
> that way.
> When I tried to use awk to print each column into a separate file
> (date.txt, month.txt, and year.txt),
> it doesn't retain the blank information on emacs but moves the value
> below upward to cover the blank. So, it'd be like
>
> date.txt
> 12
> 30
> 28
> 30
>
> month.txt
> 5
> 6
> 3
> 2
>
> How can I keep the blank as it is in the original fiile?

So this is an awk question?  man awk

Otherwise you could do it in emacs:


(require 'cl)


(defmacro* dolines (start-end &body body)
  "Executes the body with start-var and end-var bound to the start and the end 
of each lines of the current buffer in turn."
  (let ((vline (gensym)))
    (destructuring-bind (start-var end-var) start-end
      `(let ((sm (make-marker))
             (em (make-marker)))
         (unwind-protect
              (progn
                (goto-char (point-min))
                (while (< (point) (point-max))
                  (let ((,vline (point)))
                    (set-marker sm (point))
                    (set-marker em (progn (end-of-line) (point)))
                    (let ((,start-var  (marker-position sm))
                          (,end-var    (marker-position em)))
                      ,@body)
                    (goto-char ,vline)
                    (forward-line 1))))
           (set-marker sm nil)
           (set-marker em nil))
         nil))))


(dolines (start end)
  (goto-char start)
  (when (re-search-forward "^\\( *?[0-9]*\\)\\( *?[0-9]*\\)\\( *[0-9]*\\)$" end 
t)
     (let ((day   (match-string 1))
           (month (match-string 2))
           (year  (match-string 3)))
        (with-current-buffer (get-buffer-create "day.txt")
           (insert day "\n"))
        (with-current-buffer (get-buffer-create "month.txt")
           (insert month "\n"))       
        (with-current-buffer (get-buffer-create "year.txt")
           (insert year "\n")))))







-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/