Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,
I have a K shell variable which is holding some long data and when i write the content of the variable to a file, its trimming off some of the intermediate spaces.

e.g: variable="BCMSGITADD81206 DOMTAR MULTI PURPOSE SALMON STKCS CTN 0
1387CTNL70 0008.500000011.0000000010.00000005.0000N020.00075.180000050.000005000
04000003NY00500 0100 163 000000 1 1 500 Sheets per Seal; Ream Sea
led; 3"

when i do
echo "$variable" >> file.txt

the file contains the data with some of the spaces trimmed off in between
If i have 11 spaces after BCMSGITADD81206 its becoming 7 and some other spaces also getting trimmed off...


Please give me suggestion what could be the cause for this.

Thanks
Vijay

Perhaps they are not actually spaces, but tabs.

You can check using echo "$variable" | cat -vet which displays characters for what they really are.

Also, does the output of these two commands differ?

Code:

echo "$variable" | wc -c
wc -c < file.txt