Hi Experts, I need your timely help. I have a problem with merging two files. Here my situation : Here I have to compare first three fields from FILE1 with FILE2. If they are equal, I have to append the remaining values from FILE2 with FILE1 to create the output. FILE1: Class Category Item Field1 Field2 Field3 Class1 Sports Ball 11 12 13 Class2 Academic Bat 21 22 23 Class3 Academic Pen 31 32 33 Class4 Gift Birthday 41 42 43 FILE2: Class Category Item Field4 Field5 Class1 Sports Ball 14 15 Class2 Academic Bat 24 25 Class3 Academic Pen 34 35 Class5 Books Maths 54 55 OUTPUT FILE (FILE3) : Class Category Item Field1 Field2 Field3 Field4 Field5 Class1 Sports Ball 11 12 13 14 15 Class2 Academic Bat 21 22 23 24 25 Class3 Academic Pen 31 32 33 34 35 Class4 Gift Birthday 41 42 43 0 0 Your valuable suggestions are highly appreciated. Thankyou very much. PS : If it contains only one field to compare from both file, "Join" command would help to create the output. join -a1 -e "0" FILE1 FILE2 A will always finds a way.

if you have Python f=open("file2") fi=f.readline() f1={} for line in f: line=line.strip().split() f1.setdefault( ' '.join(line[:3]), ' '.join(line[3:] ) ) f.close() f=open("file1") fi=f.readline() for line in f: line=line.strip().split() key=' '.join(line[:3]) try: print ' '.join(line),f1[key] except: pass output # ./test.py Class1 Sports Ball 11 12 13 14 15 Class2 Academic Bat 21 22 23 24 25 Class3 Academic Pen 31 32 33 34 35 Class4 Gift Birthday 41 42 43

Hi Ghostdog, Sorry for not putting this. I am using -ksh. I would be more happy If i get the output in shell script and I need the first three fields to be compared and then the values must be appended. Can we acheive this by "awk"? Thankyou very much for considering this. A will always finds a way.