awk without printing newline

I want the variable sum/NR to be printed side-by-side in each iteration. How do we avoid awk from printing newline in each iteration ? In my code a newline is printed by default in each iteration

for file in cg_c ep_c is_c tau xhpl
printf "\n $file" >> to-plot.xls
    for f in 2.54 1.60 800 
        awk '{sum+=$3}; END  {print  sum/NR}' ${file}_${f}_v1.xls >> to-plot-p.xls
    done
done

I want the output to appear like this

cg_c ans1  ans2  ans3  
ep_c ans1  ans2  ans3 
is_c ans1  ans2  ans3
tau  ans1  ans2  ans3 
xhpl ans1  ans2  ans3

my current out put is like this

**cg_c**
ans1
ans2
ans3
**ep_c**
ans1
ans2
ans3
**is_c**
ans1
ans2
ans3
**tau**
ans1
ans2
ans3
**xhpl**
ans1
ans2
ans3

awk '{sum+=$3}; END {printf "%f",sum/NR}' ${file}_${f}_v1.xls >> to-plot-p.xls

print will insert a newline by default. You dont want that to happen, hence use printf instead.

The ORS (output record separator) variable in AWK defaults to "\n" and is printed after every line. You can change it to " " in the BEGIN section if you want everything printed consecutively.

_{I guess many people are entering in this question looking for a way to avoid the new line in awk. Thus, I am going to offer a solution to just that, since the answer to the specific context was already solved!}

In awk, print automatically inserts a ORS after printing. ORS stands for "output record separator" and defaults to the new line. So whenever you say print "hi" awk prints "hi" + new line.

This can be changed in two different ways: using an empty ORS or using printf.

Using an empty ORS

awk -v ORS= '1' <<< "hello
man"

This returns "helloman", all together.

The problem here is that not all awks accept setting an empty ORS, so you probably have to set another record separator.

awk -v ORS="-" '{print ...}' file

For example:

awk -v ORS="-" '1' <<< "hello
man"

Returns "hello-man-".

Using printf (preferable)

While print attaches ORS after the record, printf does not. Thus, printf "hello" just prints "hello", nothing else.

$ awk 'BEGIN{print "hello"; print "bye"}'
hello
bye
$ awk 'BEGIN{printf "hello"; printf "bye"}'
hellobye

Finally, note that in general this misses a final new line, so that the shell prompt will be in the same line as the last line of the output. To clean this, use END {print ""} so a new line will be printed after all the processing.

$ seq 5 | awk '{printf "%s", $0}'
12345$
#    ^ prompt here

$ seq 5 | awk '{printf "%s", $0} END {print ""}'
12345

one way

awk '/^\*\*/{gsub("*","");printf "\n"$0" ";next}{printf $0" "}' to-plot.xls

You can simply use ORS dynamically like this:

awk '{ORS="" ; print($1" "$2" "$3" "$4" "$5" "); ORS="\n"; print($6-=2*$6)}' file_in > file_out

If Perl is an option, here is a solution using fedorqui's example:

seq 5 | perl -ne 'chomp; print "$_ "; END{print "\n"}'

Explanation:
chomp removes the newline
print "$_ " prints each line, appending a space
the END{} block is used to print a newline

output: 1 2 3 4 5