Just wondering if there is an easy way to reverse the order of two columns of data in a file separated by a space. I know how to | cut -d" " -f1 (or -f2) and output to separate files (file1.txt and file2.txt, for example) then paste -d" " file2.txt file1.txt. Is there an easier way? Thanks!

oh, this is NOT homework (some of the stuff on here looks like it is). I work for Wells in Iowa and just wanted to change a file format in an easier method. Here is some some "sample" data:

ADAM BAKER
ALANE BENDTSEN
ANDREW MCLEAN
ANDREW MUSANTE
ANGELA ERBSEN
ANGELA WATERS
ANNA ELITHORP
ANSON PANG

I would like the last name first and first name last (reversed)... I'm not worried about sorting (I know how to | sort). Thank you so much!

Jason

I would do

nawk '{print $2 " " $1}' | fil1.txt > file2.txt

file2.txt will be

BAKER ADAM
BENDTSEN ALANE
MCLEAN ANDREW
MUSANTE ANDREW
ERBSEN ANGELA
WATERS ANGELA
ELITHORP ANNA
PANG ANSON

HTH

Sathyaram

Thank you, Sathyaram.

I haven't used awk before. If I have this file called users.txt can I pipe that to nawk '{print $2 " " $1}' then output (>) to users_reversed.txt? I'm using MKS Toolkit and getting an error message when I tried that. Is the $2 and $1 for columns or files? I'm pretty new to this, sorry! To test I wrote:
cat ./users.txt | nawk '{print $2 " " $1}' > ./test_rev.txt
but getting error msg:
nawk: ./nawk_test.sh 1: not found
Is it wanting: ./nawk_test.sh ./file1.txt ./file2.txt ?
Thank you, again!

I do not understand what has gone wrong ..

Well, in nawk (or you can use awk) ... $1 refers to the first filed of the input file , $2 the second and so on (default field seperator is space)

Sorry for not being able to help further

Sathyaram

sathyaram_s is correct, you can use awk.

also, there was a typo in his script (an unwanted pipe '|' character).

Try the corrected script:

awk '{print $2 " " $1}' fil1.txt > file2.txt

I think maybe your nawk in this case is an alias.

Try:

'nawk' '{print $2, $1}' users.txt > test_rev.txt # the single quotes wil prevent the shell using the alias.

or

unalias nawk; 'nawk' '{print $2, $1}' users.txt > test_rev.txt

or

/usr/bin/nawk '{print $2, $1}' users.txt > test_rev.txt

Or use awk.

Thanks!!!

These all worked great (of course!) and I have the desired results.
Thank you, Everyone!