Modifying specific column on the lines using a Bash script

Question

I want to modify my tab-delimited file like as below.

Original file

a001.2[tab]xxx[tab]001[tab]zz
bbb[tab]ddd[tab]293[tab]kkjk
c054.9[tab]ccc[tab]786[tab]qq

Modified file

a001[tab]xxx[tab]001[tab]zz
bbb[tab]ddd[tab]293[tab]kkjk
c054[tab]ccc[tab]786[tab]qq

I want to remove decimal (ex. a001.2 to a001) at the first column only using bash scripts.
Please let me know how should I do.
Thank you in advance.

Sorry, HTML tag doesn't work. I fixed to [tab]. Thanks for catching that. :-) — Seong-Hyeuk Nam
– Seong-Hyeuk Nam, Commented May 18, 2016 at 1:25
Does it have to be a shell construct or you are open to sed, awk etc? — heemayl
– heemayl, Commented May 18, 2016 at 1:26

heemayl · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-18 01:36:48Z

2

With sed:

sed -E 's/^([^\t]+)\.[^\t]+(.*)/\1\2/' file.txt

If the file is not large, you can use bash while loop with parameter expansion:

while IFS=$'\t' read i j; do echo "${i%%.*}"$'\t'"$j"; done <file.txt

Example:

$ cat file.txt  
a001.2  xxx 001 zz
bbb     ddd 293 kkjk
c054.9  ccc 786 qq

$ sed -E 's/^([^\t]+)\.[^\t]+(.*)/\1\2/' file.txt
a001    xxx 001 zz
bbb     ddd 293 kkjk
c054    ccc 786 qq

$ while IFS=$'\t' read i j; do echo "${i%%.*}"$'\t'"$j"; done <file.txt
a001    xxx 001 zz
bbb     ddd 293 kkjk
c054    ccc 786 qq

answered May 18, 2016 at 1:36

heemayl

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