Colrm
Command Line Utility for Column Removal
The colrm command is a powerful utility for Unix-like
operating systems that allows you to remove specified columns from a
file or from standard input (STDIN). This is incredibly useful for
data processing and text manipulation tasks where you need to clean
up or reformat data by excluding certain columns.
How to Use Colrm
The basic syntax for colrm is straightforward. You
specify the starting and ending column numbers you wish to remove,
followed by the file name. If no file is specified,
colrm reads from standard input.
Removing Columns from a File
To remove columns from a file, you provide the column range and the
file path. For example, to remove columns 1 through 4 from a file
named [FILE], you would use the following command:
colrm 1 4 [FILE]Removing Columns from Standard Input
You can also pipe the output of another command into
colrm to remove columns from the piped data. This is
common when processing the output of commands like
printf or other text-generating utilities. Here's an
example using printf:
printf 'Some of this is omitted.' | colrm 1 4
This command will print the string 'Some of this is omitted.' and
then pipe it to colrm, which will remove the first four
columns of the output before it's displayed.
Key Features and Benefits
- Efficient Column Removal: Quickly remove unwanted columns from text data.
- Flexible Input: Works with both files and standard input streams.
- Simple Syntax: Easy-to-understand command structure.
- Essential for Data Wrangling: A fundamental tool for command-line data manipulation.