trcol(1)

NAME
trc (done) lete or Translate columns of a file
                    (Rev. Apr 2005)

SYNTAX
trcol [-acols ] [-Acols ] [-bcols ] [-Bcols ] [-dcols ] [-lcols ] [ -rcols ] [-scols ] [-tcols s1 s2] [file...]

DESCRIPTION
The trcol command allows to delete or translate specified columns from a file. A test for blanks (spaces or tabs) may be performed ( -b option).

The cols selection has the form start[-end[,...]], start and end being the starting and ending column of a field. For instance, colums 1, 3 to 5, and beyond 80 (81 or more) are written 1,3-5,81-. The complete line is written 1-

Note that trcol cannot exchange columns nor insert text; see acut(1) for such facilities.

OPTIONS

The options allow to specify whether we wish to delete or translate columns.

-acols asks to transform to lowercase the specified columns.

-Acols asks to transform to uppercase the specified columns.

-bcols asks to delete with blank test the specified columns. Non-blank columns are deleted, but a warning message is issued for each non-blank character which was removed. The returned status is the number of non-blank deleted characters.

-Bcols is similar to the -b option, but no warning message is issued; just the number of deleted non-blank characters is returned as a status.

-dcols asks to delete the specified columns without any test.

-lcols asks to left-justify the specified columns - blanks existing at the left are moved to the right.

-rcols asks to right-justify the specified columns - blanks existing at the right are moved to the left.

-scols asks to squeeze blanks in the specified columns: blanks existing at the left are mobed to the right, and multiple blanks are converted into a single blank.

-tcols s1 s2 asks to translate in the columns defined by cols characters from s1 into the corresponding characters of s2 (byte-per-byte translation). Strings s1 and s2 must have the same length. The dash (-) may be used to specify intervals, e.g. a-z for the 26 lowercase letters. Non-printable characters can be specified using the C conventions.
Note : to remove a byte, use the \0, e.g. trcol -t1- ' ' '\0' removes all blanks.

file is the name of one or several (concatenated) input files. stdin is the default input file.

RESTRICTIONS
Only one operation is performed for each column; when the column ranges specified by the various options overlap, the operation applied on the shortest column is applied.

RESTRICTIONS
Only one operation is performed for each column; when the column ranges specified by the various options overlap, the operation applied on the shortest column is applied.

RETURNED STATUS
The trcol command returns 0 for successful operation, 1 when one or more n,on-blank columns are deleted (in the -b or -B options), or 2 in case of error such as inexistant file.

EXAMPLE
Remove from standard input columns 2 to 5 with error message for non-blank columns, change the blank of column 6 to a zero, and convert cols 73 and above to lower-case letters:

trcol -b2-5 -t6 ' ' '0' -t73- 'A-Z' 'a-z'

SEE ALSO
acut(1)