hi,

i rustled up a small limbo program (attached) that does the trick.

hope this helps.

% cat num1.txt
one two three
four five six
seven eight nine
% ./trans num1.txt
     one      four     seven
     two      five     eight
   three       six      nine
% cat num2.txt
one two three four
five six seven
eight nine
ten
eleven twelve
thirteen fourteen fifteen
sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen
% ./trans num2.txt
     one      five     eight       ten    eleven  thirteen   sixteen
     two       six      nine      ----    twelve  fourteen seventeen
   three     seven      ----      ----      ----   fifteen  eighteen
    four      ----      ----      ----      ----      ----  nineteen
%

thanks
dharani

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 12:44 AM, Richard Miller <9fans@hamnavoe.com> wrote:
>
> > Is there an easy way to transpose the text so that rows become
> > columns, and vice versa? Delimiter is space.
>
> If you know in advance the number of rows & colums, it's easy:
>
> term% cat t
> one two three four
> five six seven eight
> nine ten eleven twelve
> term%  tr -s ' ' '\xA' <t | pr -t -3 -l4 | tr -s ' ' ' '
> one five nine
> two six ten
> three seven eleven
> four eight twelve
>
>