[Chapter 49] 49.7 Total a Column with addup
Author: Jerry Peek, Tim O'Reilly & Mike Loukides
Date: 1998-08-04T21:56:41Z

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| Chapter 49 Working with Numbers |

## 49.7 Total a Column with addup

addup | Some programs output information in columns. The addup script totals the numbers in a column. It reads from files or standard input. For example, the lastcomm command shows CPU time used in column 4, like this:

>     % lastcomm tcomm
>     sleep            tcomm    __         0.08 secs Thu Mar 27 10:23
>     date             tcomm    __         0.08 secs Thu Mar 27 10:23
>     tail             tcomm    __         0.09 secs Thu Mar 27 10:23
>     pwho             tcomm    __         0.30 secs Thu Mar 27 10:23
>     % lastcomm tcomm | addup 4
>     0.550000

grep -c (15.8) outputs the number of matches after a colon (`:`) on each line. To total the matches, pipe grep's output through a little sed command to strip off the filenames and colon; have addup sum the output (the "first column"):

>     % grep -c CAUTION *.txt
>     abar.txt:0
>     applic.txt:3
>     badprob.txt:235
>        ...
>     % grep -c CAUTION *.txt | sed 's/.*://' | addup 1
>     317

Here's the script:

>     case "$1" in
>     [1-9]*) colnum="$1"; shift;;
>     *) echo "Usage: `basename $0` colnum [files]" 1>&2; exit 1;;
>     esac

>     # Use integer output, but switch to %.4f format if "." in input.
>     awk '{sum += $col}
>     END {print sum}' col=$colnum OFMT='%.4f' ${1+"$@"}

The `${1+"$@"}` holds filenames (if any) from the command line and works around a shell quoting problem (46.7). The awk script passes in the column through a variable on its command line, then `$col` becomes the column number. The script defaults to integer output format, without a decimal point. If it sees a "." in the input (like `1.5`), it switches to floating-point output format; the OFMT variable setting of `%.4f` forces awk to always print the result with four digits after the decimal point. (The default OFMT setting, `%.6g`, prints large numbers in e-notation. If you want that, delete the `OFMT='%.4f'`.)

- JP

49.6 Quick Arithmetic with expr |  | 49.8 It's Great to Have a Spreadsheet