This tool splits subcells in a tabular text file using another inner delimiter, producing a normalized file with multiple rows (one per each subcell). Expanded cells are written as sorted rows. Optionally, it produces a unique index column to merge the results back unambiguously, see the corresponding tool tblsubmerge - Merge previously split cells. If needed, white space is stripped from the resulting strings.

This is one of the rare tools that modifies an input column.

Input

A column with text elements separated by a distinguished character.

Options applicable to more than a single tool are summarized in common command line options.

Output example

As an example we split multiple comma-separated Drosophila transformant IDs in column two of the following file, /tmp/split.tsv,

CG number   Transformant ID
CG32158     8490, 45641, 45643
CG32155     5279
CG32154     37275
CG32152     34270, 34271
CG32150     21668, 21669

with the following command

chris-cmd$ ./tblsubsplit.pl -H -n 2 -s , -w -u Index /tmp/split.tsv

into the lines below:

CG number   Transformant ID   Index
CG32158     45641             1
CG32158     45643             1
CG32158     8490              1
CG32155     5279              2
CG32154     37275             3
CG32152     34270             4
CG32152     34271             4
CG32150     21668             5
CG32150     21669             5