1

I have two files.

file1:

Dave 734.838.9800  
Bob 313.123.4567  
Carol 248.344.5576  
Mary 313.449.1390  
Ted 248.496.2204  
Alice 616.556.4458

file2:

Bob Tuesday  
Carol Monday  
Ted Sunday   
Alice Wednesday  
Dave Thursday    
Mary Saturday

I want to merge these two into file3.

file3 should look like:

Name      On-Call     Phone  
Carol     MONDAY      248.344.5576  
Bob       TUESDAY     313.123.4567  
Alice     WEDNESDAY   616.556.4458  
Dave      THURSDAY    734.838.9800  
Nobody    FRIDAY      634.296.3356  
Mary      SATURDAY    313.449.1390  
Ted       SUNDAY      248.496.2204

So how can i do this in a shell script?

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2
  • I have a one-liner which does not include the sort - awk 'BEGIN {printf("%s %10s %10s \n" ,"Name", "On-Call", "Phone")} FNR==NR{a[$1]=$2 FS $3;next}{ print $0, a[$1]}' file1.txt file2.txt | column -t Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 15:48
  • You could also look into this - stackoverflow.com/questions/23124511/…. I believe it's the same ask. Commented Apr 19, 2015 at 17:07

1 Answer 1

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3

The join utility is intended for exactly this kind of problem: it joins two files based on one of their fields, by default the first one. The files should be sorted first; so

join <(sort file2) <(sort file1) | column -t

produces

Alice  Wednesday  616.556.4458
Bob    Tuesday    313.123.4567
Carol  Monday     248.344.5576
Dave   Thursday   734.838.9800
Mary   Saturday   313.449.1390
Ted    Sunday     248.496.2204

This is sorted by name rather than by weekday; you'd need some post-processing to sort by weekday if necessary...

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