TABMERGE(1)

okay so bestie, this is the TABMERGE(1) manual page for tabmerge, and it is literally giving “unify delimited files on common fields” 💅✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

tabmerge — unify delimited files on common fields 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

  tabmerge [action] [options] file1 file2 [...]

🎬 Actions

• --min — take only fields present in all files; yep, this is the [DEFAULT] vibe 👑
• --max — take all fields present 🌈
• -f|--fields=f1[,f2] — take only the fields mentioned in the comma-separated list 🎀

⚙️ Options

• -l|--list — list available fields 👀
• --fs=x — use x as the field separator; default is tab "\t" 🧚
• --rs=x — use x as the record separator; default is newline "\n" 🦋
• -s|--sort=f1[,f2] — sort data ASCII-betically on field(s) 🔤
• --stdout — print data in original delimited format (i.e., not in a table format) 💻
• --help — show brief help and quit 🙈
• --man — show full documentation 📖

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

okay so here’s the tea: this program merges the fields — not the rows — of delimited text files. no cap. so if several files are almost but not quite entirely unlike each other in their structure (in their field names, numbers or orders), this script lets you easily unify the files into one file with all the same fields. the output can be based on fields as determined by the three “action” flags. periodt 💅

🧪 the example files

for the following examples, consider three files that contain the following fields:

  +------------+---------------------------------+
  | File       | Fields                          |
  +------------+---------------------------------+
  | merge1.tab | name, type, position            |
  | merge2.tab | name, type, position, lod_score |
  | merge3.tab | name, position                  |
  +------------+---------------------------------+

🎀 list the fields

to list all available fields in the files and the number of times they are present:

  $ tabmerge --list merge*
  +-----------+-------------------+
  | Field     | No. Times Present |
  +-----------+-------------------+
  | lod_score | 1                 |
  | name      | 3                 |
  | position  | 3                 |
  | type      | 2                 |
  +-----------+-------------------+

🦋 merge on minimum overlapping fields

to merge the files on the minimum overlapping fields:

  $ tabmerge merge*
  +----------+----------+
  | name     | position |
  +----------+----------+
  | RM104    | 2.30     |
  | RM105    | 4.5      |
  | TX5509   | 10.4     |
  | UU189    | 19.0     |
  | Xpsm122  | 3.3      |
  | Xpsr9556 | 4.5      |
  | DRTL     | 2.30     |
  | ALTX     | 4.5      |
  | DWRF     | 10.4     |
  +----------+----------+

🌈 merge with all the fields

to merge the files and include all the fields:

  $ tabmerge --max merge*
  +-----------+----------+----------+--------+
  | lod_score | name     | position | type   |
  +-----------+----------+----------+--------+
  |           | RM104    | 2.30     | RFLP   |
  |           | RM105    | 4.5      | RFLP   |
  |           | TX5509   | 10.4     | AFLP   |
  | 2.4       | UU189    | 19.0     | SSR    |
  | 1.2       | Xpsm122  | 3.3      | Marker |
  | 1.2       | Xpsr9556 | 4.5      | Marker |
  |           | DRTL     | 2.30     |        |
  |           | ALTX     | 4.5      |        |
  |           | DWRF     | 10.4     |        |
  +-----------+----------+----------+--------+

✨ extract just name and type

to merge and extract just the name and type fields:

  $ tabmerge -f name,type merge*
  +----------+--------+
  | name     | type   |
  +----------+--------+
  | RM104    | RFLP   |
  | RM105    | RFLP   |
  | TX5509   | AFLP   |
  | UU189    | SSR    |
  | Xpsm122  | Marker |
  | Xpsr9556 | Marker |
  | DRTL     |        |
  | ALTX     |        |
  | DWRF     |        |
  +----------+--------+

💅 sort on the name

to merge the files on just the name and lod_score fields and sort on the name:

  $ tabmerge -f name,lod_score -s name merge*
  +----------+-----------+
  | name     | lod_score |
  +----------+-----------+
  | ALTX     |           |
  | DRTL     |           |
  | DWRF     |           |
  | RM104    |           |
  | RM105    |           |
  | TX5509   |           |
  | UU189    | 2.4       |
  | Xpsm122  | 1.2       |
  | Xpsr9556 | 1.2       |
  +----------+-----------+

🍓 mimic the original tab-delimited input

to do the same but mimic the original tab-delimited input:

  $ tabmerge -f name,lod_score -s name --stdout merge*
  name    lod_score
  ALTX
  DRTL
  DWRF
  RM104
  RM105
  TX5509
  UU189   2.4
  Xpsm122 1.2
  Xpsr9556        1.2

💭 why would you even want this?

why would you want to do this? suppose you have several delimited text files with nearly the same structure and want to create just one file from them, but the fields may be in a different order in each file and/or some files may contain more or fewer fields than others. (as far-fetched as it may seem, it happens to the author more than he’d like.) 😭🫶

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• Text::RecordParser
• Text::TabularDisplay

🫶 AUTHOR 🫶

Ken Youens-Clark <kclark@cpan.org>. 💖

📜 LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT 📜

Copyright (C) 2006-10 Ken Youens-Clark. All rights reserved.

this program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; version 2.

this program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. see the GNU General Public License for more details. 🌸

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that’s the whole page, bestie — source/version stamp: perl v5.32.1; date: 2022-06-01 💖🎀