Remove empty columns by awk

Question

I have a input file, which is tab delimited, but I want to remove all empty columns. Empty columns : $13=$14=$15=$84=$85=$86=$87=$88=$89=$91=$94

INPUT: tsv file with more than 90 columns

a b   d e   g...  
a b   d e   g...

OUTPUT: tsv file without empty columns

a b d e g....
a b d e g...

Thank you

Answer 1

This might be what you want:

$ printf 'a\tb\tc\td\te\n'
a       b       c       d       e

$ printf 'a\tb\tc\td\te\n' | awk 'BEGIN{FS=OFS="\t"} {$2=$4=""} 1'
a               c               e

$ printf 'a\tb\tc\td\te\n' | awk 'BEGIN{FS=OFS="\t"} {$2=$4=RS; gsub("(^|"FS")"RS,"")} 1'
a       c       e

Note that the above doesn't remove all empty columns as some potential solutions might do, it only removes exactly the column numbers you want removed:

$ printf 'a\tb\t\td\te\n'
a       b               d       e

$ printf 'a\tb\t\td\te\n' | awk 'BEGIN{FS=OFS="\t"} {$2=$4=RS; gsub("(^|"FS")"RS,"")} 1'
a               e