I knocked up the enclosed under Cygwin: #!/bin/sh ( cat <<EOTx admin ankush admin amit powerusers dinesh powerusers jitendra EOTx ) | awk ' { grpnm[$1] = grpnm[$1] ", " $2 } END { for (i in grpnm) { print i ": " substr(grpnm[i], 3) } } ' | sort The meat is the AWK programme. If collects all instances of the second column in an array indexed on the entries in the first column. At the end of the input file it handles each element of the array in turn, dropping the grammatically incorrect leading comma and space. The sort just sorts lines alphabetically, as you implied. The ( cat ... ) | construct is just to push in your test data. Are the headings part of the file? In which case you may need to add a line: NR == 1 { next } immediately after the awk line. HTH, Martin Rushton HPC System Manager, Weapons Technologies Tel: 01959 514777, Mobile: 07939 219057 email: jmrushton@xxxxxxxxxxx www.QinetiQ.com QinetiQ - Delivering customer-focused solutions Please consider the environment before printing this email. -----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:centos-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of ankush grover Sent: 30 December 2011 12:01 To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Need help in writing a shell/bash script Hi Friends, I am trying to write a shell script which can merge the 2 columns into 3rd one on Centos 5. The file is very long around 31200 rows having around 1370 unique groups and around 12000 unique user-names. The 1st column is the groupname and then 2nd column is the user-name. 1st Column (Groupname) 2nd Column (username) admin ankush admin amit powerusers dinesh powerusers jitendra The desired output should be like this admin: ankush, amit powerusers: dinesh, jitendra There are commands available but not able to use it properly to get the desired output. Please help me Thanks & Regards Ankush _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@xxxxxxxxxx http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos This email and any attachments to it may be confidential and are intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you must neither take any action based upon its contents, nor copy or show it to anyone. Please contact the sender if you believe you have received this email in error. QinetiQ may monitor email traffic data and also the content of email for the purposes of security. QinetiQ Limited (Registered in England & Wales: Company Number: 3796233) Registered office: Cody Technology Park, Ively Road, Farnborough, Hampshire, GU14 0LX http://www.qinetiq.com. _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@xxxxxxxxxx http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos