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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers cleaning up spaces from fixed width file while converting to csv file Post 302448644 by svn on Thursday 26th of August 2010 01:54:44 PM
Old 08-26-2010
cleaning up spaces from fixed width file while converting to csv file

Open to a sed/awk/or perl alternative so that i can stick command into my bash script.

This is a problem I resolve using a combination of cut commands - but that is getting convoluted. So would really appreciate it if someone could provide a better solution which basically replaces all spaces before and prior to the | sign while keeping the spaces that is part of the data.

I have fixed width file delimted by |:
Code:
John   | Doe    | 1234 Long Street Name    |NY
Mary   | H      |Short Addr                |CA

(HTML screws this up, so assume that all the pipe's are all lined up and that first name starts on 1st position, last name always starts at the 20th position, address starts at 40, State starts at 80 - sure u guys get the idea).

Since each column have varying spaces before the | delimiter, how can I quickly remove all the unnecessary spaces and make this a normal csv file instead of a fixed width file. What i want to see is:
Code:
John,Doe,1234 Long Street Name,NY
Mary,H,Short Addr,CA

Thanks much ... one of those problems that drive me crazy :-)

Last edited by Scott; 08-26-2010 at 03:01 PM.. Reason: Please use code tags
 

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RBASH(1)						      General Commands Manual							  RBASH(1)

NAME
rbash - restricted bash, see bash(1) RESTRICTED SHELL
If bash is started with the name rbash, or the -r option is supplied at invocation, the shell becomes restricted. A restricted shell is used to set up an environment more controlled than the standard shell. It behaves identically to bash with the exception that the follow- ing are disallowed or not performed: o changing directories with cd o setting or unsetting the values of SHELL, PATH, ENV, or BASH_ENV o specifying command names containing / o specifying a file name containing a / as an argument to the . builtin command o specifying a filename containing a slash as an argument to the -p option to the hash builtin command o importing function definitions from the shell environment at startup o parsing the value of SHELLOPTS from the shell environment at startup o redirecting output using the >, >|, <>, >&, &>, and >> redirection operators o using the exec builtin command to replace the shell with another command o adding or deleting builtin commands with the -f and -d options to the enable builtin command o using the enable builtin command to enable disabled shell builtins o specifying the -p option to the command builtin command o turning off restricted mode with set +r or set +o restricted. These restrictions are enforced after any startup files are read. When a command that is found to be a shell script is executed, rbash turns off any restrictions in the shell spawned to execute the script. SEE ALSO
bash(1) GNU Bash-4.0 2004 Apr 20 RBASH(1)
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