filling up rows in files to make them of equal length

biobee07 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have around 150 files with 4 columns each but variable row lengths that I need to combine by column. I do not have any common column. I want to use "paste " command in unix to do it but before that I have to get all my files to be of equal length.

Below are examples of my input files:
01-16A1-325     01-16A1-325     01-16A1-325     01-16A1-325
01-16A1-325     01-16A1-325     01-16A1-325     01-16A1-325
A     T     G     C
11     47     0     1
11     47     0     0
11     48     0     0
12     50     0     0
12     53     0     0
13     56     0     0
13     60     0     0
13     62     0     0
13     63     0     0
13     64     0     0
13     66     0     0
14     68     0     0
14     70     0     0
14     72     0     0
=====================================
01-17B7-325     01-17B7-325     01-17B7-325     01-17B7-325
01-17B7-325     01-17B7-325     01-17B7-325     01-17B7-325
A     T     G     C
52     57     56     9
53     59     58     9
54     62     62     10
57     67     69     10
61     73     80     10
68     81     95     11
74     87     112     11
81     92     127     11
86     95     141     11
92     99     157     11
98     105     178     12
104     112     205     12
110     119     237     13
116     126     271     13
121     131     307     12
126     136     346     11
133     142     389     11
141     151     439     10
151     162     494     10
161     177     556     11
171     196     622     11
[download]

Would appreciate any help. Thanks Biobee

Comment on filling up rows in files to make them of equal length Download Code

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Re: filling up rows in files to make them of equal length by johngg (Canon) on Aug 16, 2011 at 09:15 UTC
You should probably consider using printf. You may need to scan all of your files first to determine maximum column widths. `knoppix@Microknoppix:~/data$ perl -E ' > open my $inFH, q{<}, \ <<EOD or die $!; > 01-16A1-325 01-16A1-325 01-16A1-325 01-16A1-325 > 01-16A1-325 01-16A1-325 01-16A1-325 01-16A1-325 > A T G C > 11 47 0 1 > 11 47 0 0 > 11 48 0 0 > EOD > > while ( <$inFH> ) > { > printf qq{%15s%15s%15s%15s\n}, split; > }' 01-16A1-325 01-16A1-325 01-16A1-325 01-16A1-325 01-16A1-325 01-16A1-325 01-16A1-325 01-16A1-325 A T G C 11 47 0 1 11 47 0 0 11 48 0 0 knoppix@Microknoppix:~/data$` [download] I hope this is helpful. Cheers, JohnGG	[reply] [d/l]
Re: filling up rows in files to make them of equal length by duyet (Friar) on Aug 16, 2011 at 05:09 UTC
Do a `wc -l *` to find out the longest file length, then use that to fill your files with dummy data. Pseudo code: `loop thru all files open file append dummy data to end of file close file end` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]