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Home > Forums > Programmers > Languages > UNIX Scripting Forum

how to rid off leading and trailing spaces/tabs in each column?Helpful Member! 

thread822-1610507
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ogniemi (TechnicalUser)
2 Jul 10 5:07

a text file contains columns delimetered with "|" sign.

example:
  aaaaaaaa  |    fffffff |       cccc  |  ddd

how to get rid off empty leading/trailing signs in each column and get in result:

aaaaaaaa|fffffff|cccc|ddd

regards.
Helpful Member!  PHV (MIS)
2 Jul 10 5:14
One way:

CODE

sed 's!^ *!!;s! *| *!|!g;s! *$!!' /path/to/input > output

Hope This Helps, PH.
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ogniemi (TechnicalUser)
2 Jul 10 6:48
thx but tabs are still kept....

CODE

$ echo "  ssss     |     sss\tsss\t   |ddd   |a"|sed 's!^ *!!;s! *| *!|!g;s! *$!!'
ssss|sss        sss     |ddd|a
$ echo "  ssss     |     sss\tsss\t   |\tddd   |a"|sed 's!^ *!!;s! *| *!|!g;s! *$!!'
ssss|sss        sss     |       ddd|a
$
p5wizard (IS/IT--Management)
2 Jul 10 7:04
Well, you'll need to specify spaces or tabs in the sed commands like so

sed 's!^[ (tab)]*!!;'

and so on. Substitute " *" with "[ (tab)]*" in PHV's example. For sed, you'll need to type the tab character literally as it doesn't understand \t.

[xyz]* means any number of the characters inside the brackets

HTH,

p5wizard

stefanwagner (Programmer)
5 Jul 10 12:16
Gnu sed understands \t on linux (at least).  

don't visit my homepage: http://home.arcor.de/hirnstrom/minis/index.html

p5wizard (IS/IT--Management)
5 Jul 10 17:52
gnu != unix winky smile

HTH,

p5wizard

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