How to display text file in columns using bashscript in unix?

Question

I am making a bash script contact list system. This is what it prints out.

=================
Menu
=================

Enter 1 for Insert new contact
Enter 2 for Print current contact list
Enter 3 for Search contact list
Enter 4 for Exit

Enter your selection:

For "1" it ask for name, email, and phone and stores them for variables then stores them in a text file.

case "$answer" in
1) echo -e "Enter in a new contact name: \c"
    read name
   echo -e "Enter in new contact email address: \c"
    read email
   echo -e "Enter in new contact phone number: \c"
    read phone
   echo "$name, $email, $phone" >> contacts.txt ;;

For 2 is where I am having trouble. I want to display the text in three columns so I can sort them by name, email, or phone number. This is my code for case 2.

2) cat contacts.txt ;;

Obviously it only spits out:

Test Name, [email protected], 123-123-1234
Blank Data, [email protected], 234-555-5555

I want it to read:

Name          Email          Phone
Test Name     [email protected]  123-123-1234
Blank Data    [email protected]   234-555-5555

How would I do that? And how would I be able to sort it later on?

Cyrus · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-16 04:06:57Z

1

Change

echo "$name, $email, $phone" >> contacts.txt ;;

to

echo "$name,$email,$phone" >> contacts.txt ;;

and try this:

(echo Name,Email,Phone; cat contacts.txt) | column -s , -t

answered Oct 16, 2014 at 4:06

Cyrus

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John1024 · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-16 04:38:41Z

1

$ cat contacts.txt 
Test Name, [email protected], 123-123-1234
Blank Data, [email protected], 234-555-5555
$ awk -F, 'BEGIN{printf "%-12s %-15s %-12s\n","Name"," Email"," Phone"} {printf "%-12s %-15s %-12s\n",$1,$2,$3}' contacts.txt
Name          Email           Phone      
Test Name     [email protected]   123-123-1234
Blank Data    [email protected]    234-555-5555

How it works:

The printf statement allows custom formatting of output. Above the format string %-12s %-15s %-12s\n was used. Taking %-12s, for example, the 12s part means that we want to format a string to a width of 12 columns. The minus sign means that we want that field left-justified.

Looking at each piece of the awk code separately:

-F,

This tells awk to use a comma as the field separator on each line.
BEGIN{printf "%-12s %-15s %-12s\n","Name"," Email"," Phone"}

The BEGIN block is executed before the first line of the file is read. It is used here to print the header.
printf "%-12s %-15s %-12s\n",$1,$2,$3

awk implicitly loops through every line in the file. For each line, we print out the first three fields as per the format statement.

edited Oct 16, 2014 at 4:38

answered Oct 16, 2014 at 4:03

John1024

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2 Comments

cryptoparty Over a year ago

I got syntax error with this solution 3} awk: cmd. line:1: ^ backslash not last character on line

John1024 Over a year ago

@cryptoparty I just tried the code again and it runs fine for me. Could you verify that you copy-and-pasted the exact command in the answer? If still get the error, please let me know which OS, which shell, and which version of awk you are using.

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