[SOLVED] convert a row to multiple lines after every 6th space

Issue

I have text like below

Current state of abc : RUNNING Current state of def : RUNNING Current state of ghi : RUNNING

I want this single line to be split into multiple rows like below

Current state of abc : RUNNING 
Current state of def : RUNNING 
Current state of ghi : RUNNING

I tried with tr command like tr ' ' '\n' , but it prints the row after every space.

Solution

Continuing with the tr thought:

tr -s ' ' '\n' | paste -d ' ' - - - - - -
# or, handle tabs too
tr -s '[:space:]' '\n' | paste -d ' ' - - - - - -

Or sed, inserting a newline after every 6 words

sed -E 's/([^[:space:]]+[[:space:]]+){6}/&\n/g'

The same idea in perl

perl -pe 's/(\S+\s+){6}/$&\n/g'

or GNU grep for -o and \S/\s:

grep -Eo '(\S+\s+){5}\S+'

or GNU awk for multi-char RS and RT and \S/\s:

awk -v RS='(\\S+\\s+){5}\\S+' 'RT{print RT}'

Answered By - glenn jackman

Answer Checked By - Katrina (WPSolving Volunteer)