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Remove leading and trailing spaces from a file

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# 8  
Old 07-13-2017
Building on what RudiC suggested and avoiding the issues mentioned by Scrutinizer (which also applies to the sed code suggested by wbport), you could try:
Code:
awk 'gsub(/[[:space:]]*\|[[:space:]]*/, "|")+gsub(/^[[:space:]]+|[[:space:]]+$/, "")+1' temp_dbinfo.7880

If you are using a Solaris/SunOS system, change awk to /usr/xpg4/bin/awk.
# 9  
Old 07-13-2017
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scrutinizer
Try:
Code:
awk '{for(i=1; i<=NF; i++) sub(/^[ \t]+|[ \t]+$/,x,$i)}1' FS=\| OFS=\|  file

It worked perfectly for my requirement. Thank you Scrutinizer!

Would you spare few minutes to explain the awk command that you posted.

Thanks.
# 10  
Old 07-13-2017
Hi, you are welcome. It means the following:

  • The awk code use "|" as both input and output field separator (using the FS and OFS awk variables).
  • The for loop iterates over those fields
  • for every field the gsub command replaces leading space (one or more space characters, space or TAB) ^[ \t]+ and trailing space [ \t]+$ by the empty string (contained in uninitialized variable "x").
  • The "1" means "print the record"..
  • This is repeated for every line/record in the file
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