Converting tab character file to a tab delimited file

Question

[munaj86]

Hi,,

I have a file that seems to have a tab character as a separator like this:

GL000194.1^I114018^I116018^IENSG00000277400.1^IENST00000613230.1^IE1^IE1^I0.391136256^I0.0895977^INULL^I0.120615^INULL GL000194.1^I114055^I116055^IENSG00000274847.1^IENST00000400754.4^IE1^IE1^I1.936254372^I0.0657418^INULL^I0.279872^INULL GL000218.1^I53893^I55893^IENSG00000278384.1^IENST00000612565.1^IE2^IE2^I1.736604295^I0.0191132^INULL^I0.0870197^INULL GL000219.1^I82311^I84311^IENSG00000273748.1^IENST00000612919.1^IE1^IE1^I0.289379317^I2.17428^IL^I2.65944^IL GL000250.2^I3146687^I3148687^IENSG00000226704.6^IENST00000426095.2^IE1^IE1^I0.318763031^I0.0460542^INULL^I0.0599142^INULL GL000250.2^I3159360^I3161360^IENSG00000232804.5^IENST00000450744.1^IE1^IE1^I1.075686604^I0.850952^INULL^I1.80465^IL GL000250.2^I4240731^I4242731^IENSG00000242092.8^IENST00000494878.5^IE1^IE1^I0^I1.58E-23^INULL^I0^INULL GL000250.2^I4240746^I4242746^IENSG00000242092.8^IENST00000489470.1^IE1^IE1^I0^I2.73E-25^INULL^I0^INULL

I want to convert this file to a tab delimited file. I've tried the following:

sed 's/ ^I/\t/g' infile > outfile cat infiletxt | tr -d '\t' > outfiletxt

Any suggestion please?

Thanks

Answer 1

[Sej Modha]

You need an escape character to identify the special character ^

Try: sed 's/\^I/\t/g'

Answer 2

[ATpoint]

tr "^I" "\t" < file 

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