Hi Experts ! I need to replace m

[bharix]

Hi Experts !

I need to replace multiple consecative occurrences of
a charachter with one such charachter.
Can it be done with a very short code or a one liner may be?

Please use ksh, awk or sed.

For Example -
XXXXXXXXXabcdXXXXlmnopXXXXXXXXcddcXXXXXXXXXXXX1212XXXXX
should be
XabcdXlmnopXcddcX1212X

thanks in advance,
bharix

 

[mrjazz]

Hi bharix,

assuming you have a file multi with more than one line which looks like the one from your example:

$ sed "s/XX*/X/g" multi

Hope that helps,

mrjazz

 

[bharix]

Thanks a bunch mrjazz,
It worked !!

 

[dchoulette]

Well, sed and awk are powerfull.
But for simple task there is more simple commands like 'cut' and 'tr' that are easier to master, and faster and cheaper to run.

For example:

tr -s XY xy

which (tr)anslate consecutives 'X' characters to (-s)ingle 'x' character and consecutives 'Y' characters to (-s)ingle 'Y' character.

In your example you could use:

tr -s X X

 

[bharix]

Hi dchoulette - I agree. I liked your soln better. (I think - when I put the contraint of using
awk, sed or ksh in my first requirement - i was not even thinking of other and even better possibilities such as tr , cut etc.)

thanks.