Checking for spaces in fields with Regular Expression

[Jarrod13]

Hi,

I need help writing a regular expression to check for anything >= to 1 space.

That is, if my record seperator is a "|" if I have a field that is | | or | | or | | I want the regular expression to be able to check for that.

Thanks for the help

 

[LKBrwnDBA]

I'm not good at regular expressions, but this would do it:

awk -F'|' '
{f=""; 
 for (i=1;i<=NF;++i)
 {if (length($i)==0) f=f" "i;
  else if (index($i," ")>0) f=f" "i;
 }
 if (length(f)>0) print "Line "NR" has fields ("f" ) w/blanks.";
}' My_File.csv

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The person who says it can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it. -- Chinese proverb

 

[Jarrod13]

Thank you,

I also came up with this:

x ~ "^[ \t]*$"

 

[LKBrwnDBA]

Nice, unfortunately it wont work with some "embeded" blanks:

$ cat myScript
#!/bin/ksh
cat - <<! >tmp
hello|we care| more
002|8|333|9
elka|brown| |thebest
auto||vwbetter|todrive
!
awk -F'|' '
{f=""; for (i=1;i<=NF;++i){ if ([red]$i ~ "^[ \t]*$"[/red]) f=f" "i;}
 if (length(f)>0) print "Line "NR" has fields ("f" ) w/blanks.";
}' tmp
exit

$ myScript
Line 3 has fields ( 3 ) w/blanks.
Line 4 has fields ( 2 ) w/blanks.
$

Line 1 is missing!


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The person who says it can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it. -- Chinese proverb