awk split column into multiple columns in staggered manner

Question

I have a text file containing a single column of data as below :

1
2
3
4
5
6

I want to split this into multiple columns using awk or sed command as follows:

1 2 3
4 5 6

How can I do this? Thanks in advance

Answer 1

here is another approach

paste -d' ' - - - < file

with awk

awk 'ORS=NR%3?FS:RS' file

also

pr -3ats' ' file

Answer 2

This should work because echo is a default command for xargs

xargs -n 3 file

Answer 3

Using rs - reshape a data array:

$ cat file | rs -C' ' 2 3
1 2 3 
4 5 6 

• rs reads the standard input
• -C output column separator
• 2 3 rows and columns

Use -t to transpose the input:

$ cat file | rs -C' ' -t 2 3
1 3 5 
2 4 6 

Answer 4

With sed:

sed 'N; N; s/\n/ /g' file