Print columns from two files - awk

Question

How to print columns from various files?
I tried according to Awk: extract different columns from many different files
paste <(awk '{printf "%.4f %.5f ", $1, $2}' FILE.R ) <(awk '{printf "%.6f %.0f.\n", $3, $4}' FILE_R )
FILE.R == ARGV[1] { one[FNR]=$1 }
FILE.R == ARGV[2] { two[FNR]=$2 }
FILE_R == ARGV[3] { three[FNR]=$3 }
FILE_R == ARGV[4] { four[FNR]=$4 }
END {
for (i=1; i<=length(one); i++) {
print one[i], two[i], three[i], four[i]
}
}
but I don't understand how to use this script.
FILE.R
56604.6017 2.3893 2.2926 2.2033
56605.1562 2.3138 2.2172 2.2033
FILE_R
56604.6017 2.29259 0.006699 42.
56605.1562 2.21716 0.007504 40.
Output desired
56604.6017 2.3893 0.006699 42.
56605.1562 2.3138 0.007504 40.
Thank you

Answer 1

This is one way:
$ awk -v OFS="\t" 'NR==FNR{a[$1]=$2;next}{print $1,a[$1],$3,$4}' file1 file2
Output:
56604.6017 2.3893 0.006699 42.
56605.1562 2.3138 0.007504 40.
Explained:
$ awk -v OFS="\t" ' # setting the field separator to a tab
NR==FNR { # process the first file
a[$1]=$2 # hash the second field, use first as key
next
}
{
print $1,a[$1],$3,$4 # output
}' file1 file2
If the field spacing with tabs is not enough, use printf with modifiers like in your sample.