in reply to Re^4: tabular format of data
in thread tabular format of data

eew , you're shelling out for cut

Here is a oneliner

perl -F: -lane " print qq/-------/ if 1==$.; print join q/|/, @F, qq// +; print q/--/ x @F, qq//; " < infile > outfile

more verbosely written as

BEGIN { $/ = "\n"; $\ = "\n"; } LINE: while (defined($_ = <ARGV>)) { chomp $_; our(@F) = split(/:/, $_, 0); print '-------' if 1 == $.; print join('|', @F, ''); print '--' x @F, ''; }