Using Perl: # Match all lines that start with a-z or A-Z and are followed by a space perl -ne ‘print if m/^[a-z]+\s/i’ file Using awk: # Match first field’s that only contain a-z or A-Z awk ‘$1 ~ /^[a-zA-Z]+$/’ file Both will output: CABMEL 1873 1 1 CABMEL 1874 1 1 CABMEL 1875 1 … Read more
EDIT: As OP mentioned in case any de is empty with respective id then print an hyphen, then try following. awk ‘ BEGIN{ OFS=”\t” print “ID\t\tDE” } /ID/{ if(id){ print id,de?de:”-” id=de=”” } id=$2 next } /DE/{ $1=”” sub(/^ +/,””) de=$0 } END{ if(id){ print id,de?de:”-” } }’ Input_file Could you please try following. awk … Read more
Following awk could help you in same. awk ‘{print > NF”column.txt”}’ Input_file Output it will create 3 files named 5column.txt, 4column.txt and 3column.txt.