Merging two files horizontally and formatting

Question

I have two files as follows:

File_1

Austin
Los Angeles
York
San Ramon

File_2

Texas
California
New York
California

I want to merge them horizontally as follows:

Austin       Texas
Los Angeles  California
York         New York
San Ramon    California

I am able to merge horizontally by using paste command, but the formatting is going haywire.

Austin Texas
Los Angeles California
York New York
San Ramon California

I realize that paste is working as it is supposed to, but can someone point me in the right direction to get the formatting right.

Thanks.

Answer 1

paste is using a tab when 'merging' the file, so maybe you have to post-process the file and remove the tab with spaces:

paste File_1 File_2 | awk 'BEGIN { FS = "\t" } ; {printf("%-20s%s\n",$1,$2) }'

result:

Austin              Texas
Los Angeles         California
York                New York
San Ramon           California