how to remove blank spaces of a file with awk?? 3

[pabloli150]

hello

i´m trying

awk '{gsub(" ","",$0); print $0;}' filename.txt

but it answers

syntax error near line

first of all i did this for download from netbackup database jobs

privilege bpdbjobs -report -M sv88 -gdm -header |cut -c-1024 |awk -F, '{print $1, $4, $5, $7, $8, $11}' > filename.txt

 

[SamBones]

If you just want to remove all spaces, this will do...

sed 's/  *//g' filename.txt

 

[olded]

I'd take Sam's recommendation and use his sed solution.

The awk solution you posted is correct if you are using a POSIX compliant version of awk.

If you are using solaris or sun *nix, try using nawk.

 

[feherke]

Hi

The awk solution you posted is correct if you are using a POSIX compliant version of awk.

Could you explain this ? pabloli150's code seem correct and portable to me. Thank you.

Just one thing to mention. Is faster to not use regular expression if not necessary.

tr -d ' ' < filename.txt

[gray]# or even faster[/gray]

tr -ds ' ' < filename.txt

But with this one indeed you can have problem on some Unix systems.

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[PHV]

Could you explain this
With old awk you can't modify any $x variable.

 

[feherke]

Hi

I never heard about such behavior.

Thank you.

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[olded]

awk's authors added the internal functions - such as gsub - last so some of the non-compliant versions like Solaris awk lack them.

feherke, I know you like to use gawk which also isn't really compliant; it's a superset. gawk has the -W switch which disables the GNU extensions. It's documented here:

http://web.mit.edu/gnu/doc/html/gawk_16.html

 

[feherke]

Hi

feherke, I know you like to use gawk which also isn't really compliant; it's a superset.

You are right, I like [tt]gawk[/tt]. And yes, it is heavily extended. So to get a different view I always test the code I post or discuss about with [tt]mawk[/tt] too. And occasionally with [tt]awk95[/tt]. ( [tt]mawk[/tt] has less extensions. Not sure about [tt]awk95[/tt], but I think it has none. )

Of course I tried pabloli150's code with all three implementations before my reply at 27 Feb 09 4:27. And it worked correctly.

In both [tt]gawk[/tt] and [tt]mawk[/tt] man pages are sections dedicated to compatibility and extensions. But neither the [tt]$x[/tt] limitation or the [tt]gsub()[/tt] is mentioned.

gawk has the -W switch which disables the GNU extensions.

Yes, I know and use the -W posix ( --posix ) and -W traditional ( --traditional ) ( Same as -W compat ( --compat ) in the older version you referred to. ) switches.

Of course I tried pabloli150's code with all three switches before my reply at 27 Feb 09 4:27. And it worked correctly.

Thank you, I will keep this too in mind.

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/