Bash command to sum a column of numbers
BashBash Problem Overview
I want a bash command that I can pipe into that will sum a column of numbers. I just want a quick one liner that will do something essentially like this:
cat FileWithColumnOfNumbers.txt | sum
Bash Solutions
Solution 1 - Bash
Using existing file:
paste -sd+ infile | bc
Using stdin:
<cmd> | paste -sd+ | bc
Edit: With some paste implementations you need to be more explicit when reading from stdin:
<cmd> | paste -sd+ - | bc
Options used:
> -s (serial) - merges all the lines into a single line
>
>
> -d - use a non-default delimiter (the character + in this case)
Solution 2 - Bash
I like the chosen answer. However, it tends to be slower than awk since 2 tools are needed to do the job.
$ wc -l file
49999998 file
$ time paste -sd+ file | bc
1448700364
real 1m36.960s
user 1m24.515s
sys 0m1.772s
$ time awk '{s+=$1}END{print s}' file
1448700364
real 0m45.476s
user 0m40.756s
sys 0m0.287s
Solution 3 - Bash
The following command will add all the lines(first field of the awk output)
awk '{s+=$1} END {print s}' filename
Solution 4 - Bash
Does two lines count?
awk '{ sum += $1; }
END { print sum; }' "$@"
You can then use it without the superfluous 'cat':
sum < FileWithColumnOfNumbers.txt
sum FileWithColumnOfNumbers.txt
FWIW: on MacOS X, you can do it with a one-liner:
awk '{ sum += $1; } END { print sum; }' "$@"
Solution 5 - Bash
[a followup to ghostdog74s comments]
bash-2.03$ uname -sr
SunOS 5.8
bash-2.03$ perl -le 'print for 1..49999998' > infile
bash-2.03$ wc -l infile
49999998 infile
bash-2.03$ time paste -sd+ infile | bc
bundling space exceeded on line 1, teletype
Broken Pipe
real 0m0.062s
user 0m0.010s
sys 0m0.010s
bash-2.03$ time nawk '{s+=$1}END{print s}' infile
1249999925000001
real 2m0.042s
user 1m59.220s
sys 0m0.590s
bash-2.03$ time /usr/xpg4/bin/awk '{s+=$1}END{print s}' infile
1249999925000001
real 2m27.260s
user 2m26.230s
sys 0m0.660s
bash-2.03$ time perl -nle'
$s += $_; END { print $s }
' infile
1.249999925e+15
real 1m34.663s
user 1m33.710s
sys 0m0.650s
Solution 6 - Bash
You can use bc (calculator). Assuming your file with #s is called "n":
$ cat n
1
2
3
$ (cat n | tr "\012" "+" ; echo "0") | bc
6
The tr changes all newlines to "+"; then we append 0 after the last plus, then we pipe the expression (1+2+3+0) to the calculator
Or, if you are OK with using awk or perl, here's a Perl one-liner:
$perl -nle '$sum += $_ } END { print $sum' n
6
Solution 7 - Bash
while read -r num; do ((sum += num)); done < inputfile; echo $sum
Solution 8 - Bash
Use a for loop to iterate over your file …
sum=0; for x in `cat <your-file>`; do let sum+=x; done; echo $sum
Solution 9 - Bash
If you have ruby installed
cat FileWithColumnOfNumbers.txt | xargs ruby -e "puts ARGV.map(&:to_i).inject(&:+)"
Solution 10 - Bash
[root@pentest3r ~]# (find / -xdev -size +1024M) | (while read a ; do aa=$(du -sh $a | cut -d "." -f1 ); o=$(( $o+$aa )); done; echo "$o";)