Hello, I am trying to combine features using bedtools merge. I have been using the -s option to enforce strandedness when combining the features. I'd like the final file to be a BED5 file so following coordinates I'd like to print the mean score, followed by the strandedness.

However, I've run into issues because the "-s" option makes bedtools automatically print the strandedness on a 4th column, so when I input the command:

bedtools merge -i concatenated.bed -s -c 5,6 -o mean,distinct > mergedPeaks_w_score.bed

I get a file that has 6 columns: chrom, start, end, strand, score, strand but I want a file that has 5 columns: chrom, start, end, score, strand