I'm reading from a file that is semi-colon delimited. One of the fields contains 2 spaces separating the first and last name (4th field in - "JOHN<space><space> DOE"):

e.g. TORONTO;ONTARIO;1 YONGE STREET;JOHN DOE;CANADA

When I read this record and either echo/print to screen or write to output, the 2 spaces get converted to a single space. I need to keep all spaces intact when writing to output.

Here's a snippet of code I'm using. I'm attempting to load a series of records into an array with the purpose of performing logic on the contents and then outputting to several different output(s):

exec 3<$1 # Open input
exec 4>$1.out # Open output
let CNF_REC_CNT=CNF_REC_CNT+1
read -u3 REC_BUF[CNF_REC_CNT]
print "Buffer is : "${REC_BUF[CNF_REC_CNT]}""

How do I get around this?

try:

Still doesn't work. Thx for trying. Getting same results.

You need to put the variable inside single quotes when you print it. You think you did this but you didn't:

print "Buffer is : "${REC_BUF[CNF_REC_CNT]}""

First quoted string:"Buffer is : "
Unquoted string: ${REC_BUF[CNF_REC_CNT]}
Second quoted string: ""

Maybe you wanted:
print "Buffer is : \"${REC_BUF[CNF_REC_CNT]}\""
which is now a single quoted string.

That may have been a typo on my part. My program does write to output ok except for the fact that the double space comes out as a single space.

I'm going to ditch using the 'read' command and try using a combination of cat, grep and awk to rip through the file. If I do a :

REC_BUF=`grep '^' $1`

and then output to screen, the 2 spaces appear. Therefore I know it's a 'read' specific feature.