++ the above, but a stray concern intrudes: what if OP is talking about "column number" in the sense widely used by folk looking at

xxx    yyyyy    zzzz      111
aaa    bbbb     ccccc             222
[download]

who declare, not without justification, that the "y"s and "b"s appear in column two; the numerals "1" in column 4 and the numbers "2" in column 5.

rsriram... this is a case where more precise language, or a sample of the dataset would help.

and, if this is indeed a comma or tab delimited text file, why ...count the tabs!