OK, this ones been bugging me....

9DH21AQAE~56081~109~12/18/2003~ ~B ~ ~


I want to remove all but 1 of the trailing spaces after the last ~, there may be 2 or more trailing spaces

tried

s/\~ +/\~ /g but no go

thanks

I think that you are trying to edit the file in vi, right? Actually I don't know what result you want.

if you want the following result.
9DH21AQAE~
then
:s/\~[^~]*.*$/\~/

9DH21AQAE~56081~
then
:s/\(^[^~]*\~[^~]*\~\).*$/\1/

9DH21AQAE~56081~109~
skipped, refer to above reference

9DH21AQAE~56081~109~12/18/2003~
skipped, refer to above reference

if you want to remove the last ~
9DH21AQAE~56081~109~12/18/2003~ ~B ~
then
:s/\(^.*\)\~$/\1/

Right now I am testing in vi but eventually the replace will be put into a script.

what I want is to remove all but 1 trailing space:

9DH21AQAE~56081~109~12/18/2003~ ~B ~ ~ <space> <space> ..............

to

9DH21AQAE~56081~109~12/18/2003~ ~B ~ ~<space>

there will be 1 or more trailing spaces but I only ever want 1 space after the last ~

ok, got your meaning now.

try it
s/\(^.*\~\) *$/\1/

sorry, a typo found

s/\(^.*\~\) *$/\1 / <--- one space behind \1

Thanks tikual,

works great!