this is the swift standard primer file. You are a bit off in your interpretation of the columns (seems like you missed one as there are 12 columns, not 11 which threw everything off): 1) Chromosome 2) Target Start 3) Target Stop 4) **Target Name** (change which affected everything downstream in counting) 5) 5' Primer Start 6) 5' Primer Stop 7) 5' Primer Name 8) 3' Primer Start 9) 3' Primer Stop 10) 3' Primer Name 11) 5' Primer Sequence 12) 3' Primer Sequence To convert to a BEDPE describing the primer locations, you only will need columns 1, 5, 6, 8, and 9 (and optionally 4). The last letter of the Region name for the denotes the strand orientation of the region. For example Region 1 has _F denoting forward or (+) strand for BEDPE usage, while region 2 has _R in name denoting reverse or (-) strand for BEDPE. Putting all this together, you can convert to BEDPE with: $ awk -v OFS="\t" '{ o="."; if($4~/_F\//){ o="+" } else if($4~/_R\//){ o="-" } print $1,$5,$6,$1,$8,$9,$4,".",o}' foo.masterfile 1 43814932 43814951 1 43815064 43815081 MPL_S505N-A519T_F/2 . + 1 115256457 115256480 1 115256576 115256602 NRAS_G60-S65_new_R/1 . -