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Awk/sed - add space between dot and letter

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# 1  
Old 01-22-2013
Awk/sed - add space between dot and letter
I need to change
Code:
[A-Z].[A-Z]

into
Code:
[A-Z]. [A-Z]

so that e.g.
Code:
A.J

becomes
Code:
A. J

I have tried
Code:
sed 's/[A-Z]\.[A-Z]/[A-Z]\.\ [A-Z]/g'

but that didn't work.
# 2  
Old 01-22-2013
Code:
sed 's/\([A-Z]\)\.\([A-Z]\)/\1. \2/g'

\1 is the 1st matching \(...\) etc.
This User Gave Thanks to MadeInGermany For This Post:
locoroco
# 3  
Old 01-23-2013
Hi,

you can use this also.
Code:
sed "s/\./\. /g" $file

Reason: replace the "." with ". "

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Last edited by Franklin52; 01-23-2013 at 09:30 AM..
# 4  
Old 01-23-2013
But here the task is to replace "." when prefixed and followed by an uppercase character.
Test:
Code:
echo ...A.1.B.C.D.E.FX. | sed 's/\([A-Z]\)\.\([A-Z]\)/\1. \2/g'

...A.1.B. C.D. E.FX.
You further see how the /g modifier works. It repeats the expression on the remainder of the line, after the part that was covered by the previous expression.
If the repetition should include the last character of the previous expression, things become complicated. In this case one can run the whole statement twice:
Code:
echo ...A.1.B.C.D.E.FX. | sed 's/\([A-Z]\)\.\([A-Z]\)/\1. \2/g; s/\([A-Z]\)\.\([A-Z]\)/\1. \2/g'

...A.1.B. C. D. E. FX.
# 5  
Old 01-23-2013
Hey,

you can use this also.

Code:
#iterating the sed command up to end
echo ...A.1.B.C.D.E.FX. | sed -e :a -e 's/\([A-Z]\{1\}\)\.\([A-Z]\{1\}\)/\1\. \2/;ta'
...A.1.B. C. D. E. FX.

Last edited by Scott; 01-24-2013 at 07:33 AM.. Reason: Code tags
This User Gave Thanks to srinivas matta For This Post:
MadeInGermany
# 6  
Old 01-24-2013
Thanks for the hint!
The explicit loop is certainly more efficient.
Code:
echo ...A.1.B.C.D.E.FX. | sed -e :a -e 's/\([A-Z]\)\.\([A-Z]\)/\1. \2/;ta'

# 7  
Old 01-24-2013
Nice solution indeed. But you don't necessarily need the two expressions (may depend on the sed version used?),
Code:
$ echo ...A.1.B.C.D.E.FX. | sed ':a;s/\([A-Z]\)\.\([A-Z]\)/\1. \2/;ta'
...A.1.B. C. D. E. FX.

will do as well.
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