awk transpose column to line and adjust field width [duplicate] - awk

Question

With this script every field is printed out according to the longest word of the current file, but needs to have a line break every file. How can this be achieved?
awk 'BEGIN{ORS="\n"}FNR=NR{a[i++]=$0; if(length($0) > length(max)) max=$0;l=length(max)} END{ for(j=1; j<=i;j++) printf("%-"(l+1)"s,",a[j-1])}' file1 file2 >outfile
file1
HELLO
WORLD
SOUTH IS
WARM
NORTH IS
COLD
file2
HELLO
WORLD
SOUTH
WARM
NORTH
COLD
output
HELLO ,WORLD ,SOUTH IS ,WARM ,NORTH IS ,COLD
HELLO ,WORLD ,SOUTH ,WARM ,NORTH ,COLD

Answer 1

It's not entirely clear what you are asking for, but perhaps you just want:
FNR==1 {print "\n"}
Which will print a newline whenever it starts reading the first line of a file. Make sure this pattern/action is before any others so that the newline prints before any other action prints anything for the first line of the current file. (This does not appear to apply in your case, since no such action exists.)

Answer 2

Took me some time, got it solved with this script.
awk '{ NR>1 && FNR==1 ? l=length($0) && a[i++]= "\n" $0 : a[i++]=$0 }
{if(NR>1 && FNR==1) for(e=(i-c);e<=(i-1);e++) b[e]=d ;c=FNR; d=l }
{ if( length($0) > l) l=length($0)+1 }
END{for(e=(i-c+1);e<=i;e++) b[e]=d; for(j=1;j<=i;j++) printf("%-"b[j]"s,",a[j-1] )}' infiles* >outfile

Answer 3

#!/usr/bin/awk -f
function beginfile (file) {
split("", a)
max = 0
delim = ""
}
function endfile (file) {
for (i = 1; i <= lines; i++) {
printf "%s%-*s", delim, max, a[i]
delim = " ,"
}
printf "\n"
}
FILENAME != _oldfilename \
{
if (_oldfilename != "")
endfile(_oldfilename)
_oldfilename = FILENAME
beginfile(FILENAME)
}
END { endfile(FILENAME) }
{
len = length($0)
if (len > max) {
max = len
}
a[FNR] = $0
lines = FNR
}
To run it:
chmod u+x filename
./filename file1 file2
Note that in gawk you can do delete a instead of split("", a). GAWK 4 has builtin BEGINFILE and ENDFILE.