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Remove spaces in the beginning of a string

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# 1  
Old 05-07-2010
Remove spaces in the beginning of a string
Hi,

I am trying to remove spaces from the beginning of a string (which i am using in my shell script). For ex - my string looks like this -
Code:
" no rows selected"

and i want the string to look like this -
Code:
"no rows selected"

How can i achieve this?

Thanks!
# 2  
Old 05-07-2010
Code:
echo " no rows selected" |sed 's/ no/no/g'

# 3  
Old 05-07-2010
Hi, I don't understand what you need.

do you have in your script " no rows selected"? but...a variable contains that or is hardcoded?..
# 4  
Old 05-07-2010
@curleb - I have stored my string with leading spaces in a variable and when i try to use the command provided by you above...it returns a blank....i mean it does not return an output at all -

Code:
value=" no rows selected"
val=$value|sed 's/ no/no/g'
echo output=$val

This returns output as follows-

Code:
output=

which necessarily means its returning a blank output.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!!
# 5  
Old 05-07-2010
Try this:
Code:
unix.com$ echo '   abc def' | sed 's/^\ *//'
abc def

Maybe it can help you a bit Smilie

The same with a variable:
Code:
unix.com$ a='   abc def'
unix.com$ b=$(echo "$a" | sed 's/^\ *//')
unix.com$ echo "$b"
abc def

Last edited by tukuyomi; 05-07-2010 at 02:47 PM..
# 6  
Old 05-07-2010
you're not actually seeing that the val assignment is erroroneous...you'll need to wrap it somehow, normally with $( ... ) in ksh:

Code:
value=" no rows selected"
val=$(echo $value |sed 's/ no/no/g' ) 
echo output=$val

This User Gave Thanks to curleb For This Post:
shrutihardas
# 7  
Old 05-07-2010
@tukuyomi - when i try the code provided by you...as follows -

Code:
value=" no rows selected"
val=$(echo "$value" | sed 's/^\ *//g')
echo output="$val"

I get the response as follows:

Code:
output=

no rows selected

So basically its adding an entire line of space in the output.

Any thoughts?
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