Splitting lines and numbering the pieces
As I mentioned in my computational survivalist post, I'm working on a project where I have a dedicated computer with little more than basic Unix tools, ported to Windows. It's given me new appreciation for how the standard Unix tools fit together; I've had to rely on them for tasks I'd usually do a different way.
I'd seen the nl command before for numbering lines, but I thought "Why would you ever want to do that? If you want to see line numbers, use your editor." That way of thinking looks at the tools one at a time, asking what each can do, rather than thinking about how they might work together.
Today, for the first time ever, I wanted to number lines from the command line. I had a delimited text file and wanted to see a numbered list of the column headings. I've written before about how you can extract columns using cut, but you have to know the number of a column to select it. So it would be nice to see a numbered list of column headings.
The data I'm working on is proprietary, so I downloaded a PUMS (Public Use Microdata Sample) file named ss04hak.csv from the US Census to illustrate instead. The first line of this file is
RT,SERIALNO,DIVISION,MSACMSA,PMSA,PUMA,REGION,ST,ADJUST,WGTP,NP,TYPE,ACR,AGS,BDS,BLD,BUS,CONP,ELEP,FULP,GASP,HFL,INSP,KIT,MHP,MRGI,MRGP,MRGT,MRGX,PLM,RMS,RNTM,RNTP,SMP,TEL,TEN,VACS,VAL,VEH,WATP,YBL,FES,FINCP,FPARC,FSP,GRNTP,GRPIP,HHL,HHT,HINCP,HUPAC,LNGI,MV,NOC,NPF,NRC,OCPIP,PSF,R18,R65,SMOCP,SMX,SRNT,SVAL,TAXP,WIF,WKEXREL,FACRP,FAGSP,FBDSP,FBLDP,FBUSP,FCONP,FELEP,FFSP,FFULP,FGASP,FHFLP,FINSP,FKITP,FMHP,FMRGIP,FMRGP,FMRGTP,FMRGXP,FMVYP,FPLMP,FRMSP,FRNTMP,FRNTP,FSMP,FSMXHP,FSMXSP,FTAXP,FTELP,FTENP,FVACSP,FVALP,FVEHP,FWATP,FYBLP
I want to grab the first line of this file, replace commas with newlines, and number the results. That's what the following one-liner does.
head -n 1 ss04hak.csv | sed "s/,/\n/g" | nl
The output looks like this:
1 RT 2 SERIALNO 3 DIVISION 4 MSACMSA 5 PMSA... 100 FWATP 101 FYBLP
Now if I wanted to look at a particular field, I could see the column number without putting my finger on my screen and counting. Then I could use that column number as an argument to cut -f.