How to replace a column with Awk with a column from ANOTHER file

Question

I need to replace the $6 from file A with the $147 from file B. Can anyone help me with the syntax?

I tried with

cut -d, f6 fileA | paste -d, f157 fileB

but it doesnt work. I tried also

awk '$6 fileA = $157 fileB'

but the syntaxis is wrong.

Welcome to the site. Please edit your post to show what you already tried. Also, do you want the replacement to be done line-wise, i.e. replace field 6 of line 1 of file A with field 6 of line 1 on file B anf field 6 on line 2 with field 147 on line 2 etc., or is it a constant value from file B? — AdminBee, Sep 17 '20 at 13:12

DopeGhoti · Answer 1 · 2020-09-18T14:21:19.760

2

Work backwards. Catalogue the replacements, and then insert them as you parse the 'main' file:

$ awk 'NR == FNR { replacements[NR]=$147 } NR != FNR { $6 = replacements[FNR]; print }' fileB fileA

To save the output to a new file, use a shell redirect as usual:

$ awk 'NR == FNR { replacements[NR]=$147 } NR != FNR { $6 = replacements[FNR]; print }' fileB fileA > newFileC

edited Sep 18 '20 at 14:21

answered Sep 17 '20 at 15:47

DopeGhoti

It worked great...but it prints the result. How can I save the edited file? I tried adding at the end of the file > fileC.txt but it didnt work... – Jose Sep 18 '20 at 10:28

1 Answers1