Add a header to a tab delimited file

linux unix sed awk cat
Dnaiel picture Dnaiel · Oct 15, 2012 · Viewed 41.7k times · Source

I'd like to add a header to a tab-delimited file but I am not sure how to do it in one line in linux.

Let us say my file is:

roger\t18\tcolumbia\tnew york\n
albert\t21\tdartmouth\tnew london\n
etc...

and now I'd like to add a header that says:

name\tage\tuniversity\tcity

How would I do that in one line in linux? I am ok with awk, sed, cat, etc. not familiar at all with perl though.

Answer

newfurniturey picture newfurniturey · Oct 15, 2012

There isn't a "prepend" operator like the "append" operator >>, but you can write the header to a temp-file, copy your file's contents into the temp-file after that, and move it back:

echo -e "name\tage\tuniversity\tcity" | cat - yourfile > /tmp/out && mv /tmp/out yourfile

Related questions

Turning multiple lines into one comma separated line

I have the following data in multiple lines: foo bar qux zuu sdf sdfasdf What I want to do is to convert them to one comma separated line: foo,bar,qux,zuu,sdf,sdfasdf What's the best unix one-liner to …

Read More
how to subset a file - select a numbers of rows or columns

I would like to have your advice/help on how to subset a big file (millions of rows or lines). For example, (1) I have big file (millions of rows, tab-delimited). I want to a subset of this file with only …

Read More
Delete empty lines using sed

I am trying to delete empty lines using sed: sed '/^$/d' but I have no luck with it. For example, I have these lines: xxxxxx yyyyyy zzzzzz and I want it to be like: xxxxxx yyyyyy zzzzzz What should …

Read More