Re: OT: a problem about text manipulation

[Benjamin Franz <snowhare nihongo org>]

On Wed, 1 Nov 2006, Hirofumi Saito wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 31, 2006 at 04:18:31PM +0500, Yakov Hrebtov wrote:
> > Paul Smith wrote:
> > >I am looking for an automatic way of transforming my text file into
> > >another one with the format
> > You may try this:
> >  cat ./test.txt | awk '{print $1" "$2; print $1" "$3; print $1" "$4}' | 
> >  grep -v ' $'
> 
> $ awk '{for(i=2;i<=NF;i++)printf $1"\t"$i"\n"}' test.txt
> 
> That's all.
> 
> or, try this.
> 
> $ awk '{for(i=2;i<=NF;i++)print $1, $i}' test.txt
> 
> I think awk is the best solution for this problem.

Both of those (as well as Yakov Hrebtov's awk script) generate

1 E
1 E
1 E
2 C
2 D
2 3
2 B
2 E
2 D
4 C
4 E
4 D
5 D
5 E

(notice the line reading '2 3')

instead of what I believe to be the correct

1 E
1 E
1 E
2 C
2 D
3 B
3 E
3 D
4 C
4 E
4 D
5 D
5 E

output.

You both missed that there is a line with multiple different numbered 
entries embedded that have to be seperated from each other.

-- 
Benjamin Franz

"It is moronic to predict without first establishing an error rate
 for a prediction and keeping track of one’s past record of accuracy."
                    -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled By Randomness