I have a file like this
gene - chr7 55675 55676 100 100 gene - chr7 55678 55679 100 100 gene - chr7 55683 55686 NP 100 The file is tab separated.
I want to change the file such that column 5 should be at column 4 and column 4 at column 5 and after that print all the columns as it is. I am showing you only 2 columns after 5th column, but there can be many more.
I tried cut -f 1,2,3,5,4,6- but it does not work.
I would prefer an awk solution for it.
Thanks
To swap fields 4 and 5:
$ awk -F'\t' '{a=$4; $4=$5; $5=a;} 1' OFS='\t' file gene - chr7 55676 55675 100 100 gene - chr7 55679 55678 100 100 gene - chr7 55686 55683 NP 100 How it works:
-F'\t'
This sets the field separator on input to a tab.
a=$4; $4=$5; $5=a
This swaps the fourth and fifth fields.
1
This is awk's cryptic shorthand for print-the-line.
OFS='\t'
This tells awk to use a tab as the field separator on output.
To swap the fields on all lines except the first:
awk -F'\t' -v OFS='\t' 'NR>1{a=$4; $4=$5; $5=a;} 1' file NR is the line number. The NR>1 placed before the swap commands is a condition. The swap commands will be performed only if the condition is true.
Some stylists recommend that the assignment to OFS be before the code:
awk -F'\t' -v OFS='\t' '{a=$4; $4=$5; $5=a;} 1' file 