pig - how to reference columns in a FOREACH after

Question

A = load 'a.txt' as (id, a1);
B = load 'b.txt as (id, b1);
C = join A by id, B by id;
D = foreach C generate id,a1,b1;
dump D;

4th line fails on: Invalid field projection. Projected field [id] does not exist in schema

I tried to change to A.id but then the last line fails on: ERROR 0: Scalar has more than one row in the output.

Answer 1

@nweiler :if you know the first and last field of relation A then you can write something like below:

     D = FOREACH C GENERATE A::FirstCol..A:LastCol ;

This will give you all the columns between FirstCol and LastCol.

Answer 2

What you are looking for is the "Disambiguate Operator". What you want is A::id, not A.id.

A.id says "there is a relation/bag A and there is a column called id in its schema"

A::id says "there is a record from A and that has a column called id"

So, you would do:

A = load 'a.txt' as (id, a1);
B = load 'b.txt as (id, b1);
C = join A by id, B by id;
D = foreach C generate A::id,a1,b1;
dump D;

---

A dirty alternative:

Just because I'm lazy, and disambiguation gets really weird when you start doing multiple joins one after another: use unique identifiers.

A = load 'a.txt' as (ida, a1);
B = load 'b.txt as (idb, b1);
C = join A by ida, B by idb;
D = foreach C generate ida,a1,b1;
dump D;