QuickTip: Split Single Column into Multiple Columns

Consider a single column file which begins with

$ cat file.txt
1
yes
single
125K
no
2
no
married
100K
no

...

Suppose you want to split it into 5 columns so that it looks like

1 yes single 125K no

2 no married 100K no

...

You can use either,

$ xargs -n5 < file.txt

or if you want some control over the delimiter

$ paste - - - - - -d, < file.txt

1,yes,single,125K,no

2,no,married,100K,no

QuickTip: Adding Search Paths in Octave

Suppose you want a utility (such as matrixTeX.m) to be visible to every octave session.

1. Select a suitable folder to keep your local octave files in (e.g. /home/sachin/octave/ on my Linux box). If such a folder doesn't exist, make one.

2.  Fire up an octave session

3. In Octave, add the path to the path variable:

octave:> addpath(genpath("/home/sachin/octave")) 

4. List directories in default path (your output will likely look different)

octave:> path 

/home/sachin/octave
/home/sachin/octave/io-2.4.11
/home/sachin/octave/io-2.4.11/doc
/home/sachin/octave/io-2.4.11/packinfo
/home/sachin/octave/io-2.4.11/templates

etc.

4. So far, we haven't permanently written the modified path to disk. To do this:

octave:> savepath

My LaTeX Cheat Sheet

Here is a link to my LaTeX cheatsheet.

Here is a list of some useful LaTeX related links from the past:

• Exporting matrix to LaTeX from matlab/octave and python
• TeXmaker: Setting up user tags
• The TeX directory structure for installing packages manually
• Sed one-liners (references order, math mode)
• Tools: detex, TeXCount, aligning matrices

Links

1. Anti-GMO study fails to replicate (neurologica)

2. When a six-sigma event occurs (John D Cook)

3. Jordan Canonical Form doesn't compute (Cleve Moler)

4. I have no peers! (wondermark)