I have a question. I was trying to deal with it by myself, but it seems like I am too new in awk to make it work.Let's assume that we have a file (eg. database.txt) (values are tab-separated):NA64715 YU24921 MI84612 MI98142 NA94732    3241531 4957192 4912030 6574918 0473625     0294637 9301032 8561730 8175919 8175920     9481732 9359032 8571930 8134983 9385130     9345091 9385112 2845830 4901742 3455141     In a separate file (eg. populations.txt) I have information about which ID belongs to which group, eg.:NA64715 Europe    YU24921 Europe    MI84612 Asia    MI98142 Africa    NA94732 Asia    What I need to do is to force awk to create separate files with columns for all groups (Europe, Asia, Africa). The file I need to work on is huge, so I cannot simply count and number columns and do it the easy way. I need awk to check which ID belongs to which population (Europe etc.), then find that particular column in a database file, and then copy a whole column to a new file (separate for all the populations).The result should look like:File 1 (europe.txt):NA64715 YU24921     3241531 4957192     0294637 9301032     9481732 9359032    9345091 9385112      File 2 (asia.txt)MI84612 NA94732    4912030 0473625    8561730 8175920    8571930 9385130    2845830 3455141    File 3 (africa.txt)MI98142     6574918    8175919    8134983    4901742    Can anyone help me with this issue?
AWK - a question about columns
awk;columns