Paste corresponding characters from multiple lines together - linux

Question

I'm writing a linux-command that pasts corresponding characters from multiple lines together. For example: I want to change these lines
A---
-B--
---C
--D-
to this:
A----B-----D--C-
So far, i've made this:
cat sanger.a sanger.c sanger.g sanger.t | cut -c 1
This does the trick for only the first column, but it has to work for all the columns.
Is there anyone who can help?
EDIT: This is a better example. I want this:
SUGAR
HONEY
CANDY
to become
SHC UOA GND AED RYY (without spaces)

Answer 1

Awk way for updated spec
awk -vFS= '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++)a[i]=a[i]$i}
END{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++)printf "%s",a[i];print ""}' file
Output
A----B-----D--C-
SHCUOAGNNAEDRYY
P.s for a large file this will use lots of memory
A terrible way not using awk, also you need to know the number of fields before hand.
for i in {1..4};do cut -c $i test | tr -d "\n" ; done;echo

Answer 2

Here's a solution without awk or sed, assuming the file is named f:
paste -s -d "" <(for i in $(seq 1 $(wc -L < f)); do cut -c $i f; done)
wc -L is a GNUism which returns the length of the longest line in the input file, which might not work depending on your version/locale. You could instead find the longest line by doing something like:
awk '{if (length > x) {x = length}} END {print x}' f
Then using this value in the seq command instead of the above command substitution.

Answer 3

All right, time for some sed insanity! :D
Disclaimer: If this is for something serious, use something less brittle than this. awk comes to mind. Unless you feel confident enough in your sed abilities to maintain this lunacy.
cat file1 file2 etc | sed -n '1h; 1!H; $ { :loop; g; s/$/\n/; s/\([^\n]\)[^\n]*\n/\1/g; p; g; s/^.//; s/\n./\n/g; h; /[^\n]/ b loop }' | tr -d '\n'; echo
This comes in three parts: Say you have a file foo.txt
12345
67890
abcde
fghij
then
cat foo.txt | sed -n '1h; 1!H; $ { :loop; g; s/$/\n/; s/\([^\n]\)[^\n]*\n/\1/g; p; g; s/^.//; s/\n./\n/g; h; /[^\n]/ b loop }'
produces
16af
27bg
38ch
49di
50ej
After that, tr -d '\n' deletes the newlines, and ;echo adds one at the end.
The heart of this madness is the sed code, which is
1h
1!H
$ {
:loop
g
s/$/\n/
s/\([^\n]\)[^\n]*\n/\1/g
p
g
s/^.//
s/\n./\n/g
h
/[^\n]/ b loop
}
This first follows the basic pattern
1h # if this is the first line, put it in the hold buffer
1!H # if it is not the first line, append it to the hold buffer
$ { # if this is the last line,
do stuff # do stuff. The whole input is in the hold buffer here.
}
which assembles all input in the hold buffer before working on it. Once the whole input is in the hold buffer, this happens:
:loop
g # copy the hold buffer to the pattern space
s/$/\n/ # put a newline at the end
s/\([^\n]\)[^\n]*\n/\1/g # replace every line with only its first character
p # print that
g # get the hold buffer again
s/^.// # remove the first character from the first line
s/\n./\n/g # remove the first character from all other lines
h # put that back in the hold buffer
/[^\n]/ b loop # if there's something left other than newlines, loop
And there you have it. I might just have summoned Cthulhu.