How to format my text file for better appearance?

Question

I want to format my text file for better appearance. So I want any command or any shell script which will format my file as per my expectation. Input File:

Index Name City
1. Ravi Bhuva Ahmedabad
2. Gaurav Bhuva Rajkot
3. Nimesh Godhasara Junagadh
4. Abhyuday Godhasara Nadiyad
.
.
100. abcd xyz

Output File:

Index  Name                          City
1.     Ravi Bhuva                    Ahmedabad
2.     Gaurav Bhuva                  Rajkot
3.     Nimesh Godhasara              Junagadh
4.     Abhyuday Godhasara            Nadiyad
.
.
100.   abcd                          xyz

Answer 1

perl.

Assumption: the city only has a single word.

perl -MList::Util=max -lane '
    push @num,  shift @F; 
    push @city, pop @F; 
    push @name, join(" ", @F); 
    END {
        @max = (
            max(map {length} @num),
            max(map {length} @name),
            max(map {length} @city)
        );
        printf "%-*s  %-*s  %-*s\n", 
            $max[0], $num[$_], 
            $max[1], $name[$_], 
            $max[2], $city[$_]
        for (0..$#num);
    }
' <<END
Index Name City
1. Ravi Bhuva Ahmedabad
2. Gaurav Bhuva Rajkot
3. Nimesh Godhasara Junagadh
4. Abhyuday Godhasara Nadiyad
42. a b c d e f city
100. abcd xyz
END

output

Index  Name                City     
1.     Ravi Bhuva          Ahmedabad
2.     Gaurav Bhuva        Rajkot   
3.     Nimesh Godhasara    Junagadh 
4.     Abhyuday Godhasara  Nadiyad  
42.    a b c d e f         city     
100.   abcd                xyz      

Answer 2

You need something to delimit names from cities (since cities may also have more than one word, presumably). Are all names exactly two tokens (first+last)? If so, you can assume anything after the the index and two-part name is city name. Here's one that does so:

cat new.txt | sed 's/^\(\S\+\)\s/\1~/' | sed 's/^\(\S\+\s\+\S\+\)\s\+\(.*\)$/\1~\2/' | column -s \~ -t

though the last label at the top (city) must be aligned manually.

Answer 3

Most Linux systems have python running on them. Running this python script will get you the results you're looking for:

line_template = "{:8}\t{:20}\t{}\n"
name_template = "{} {}"

with open('test.txt') as f:
    with open('test_new.txt', 'w') as f_new:
        first_line = f.readline()
        ind, name, city = first_line.split()
        f_new.write(line_template.format(ind, name, city))

        for line in f:
            ind, first_name, last_name, city = line.split()
            name_string = name_template.format(first_name, last_name)
            f_new.write(line_template.format(ind, name_string, city))

I used you're original first 4 entries above and produced the following output file:

Index       Name                    City
1.          Ravi Bhuva              Ahmedabad
2.          Gaurav Bhuva            Rajkot
3.          Nimesh Godhasara        Junagadh
4.          Abhyuday Godhasara      Nadiyad