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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Replacing multiple spaces in flat file Post 302906990 by S. BASU on Wednesday 25th of June 2014 06:05:04 AM
Old 06-25-2014
Replacing multiple spaces in flat file

Greetings all

I have a delimited text file (the delimiter is ';') where certain fields consist of many blanks e.g. ; ; and ; ;

Before I separate the data I need to eliminate these blanks altogether.

I tried the sed command using the following syntax:
Code:
sed -i 's/; *;/;;/g' <filename>

The * indicates that however many spaces are found between two semi-colons should be replaced by nothing so the string to replace with is an empty string surrounded by two semi-colons.

However I see that this only works on ASCII files whereas my files are ISO-8859. In these files this command doesn't detect multiple spaces with the * character.

Would anyone have some ideas?

Thanks & regards

Tony

Last edited by Don Cragun; 06-25-2014 at 03:43 PM.. Reason: Please use code and icode tags when spaces are important.
 

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Regexp::Common::delimited(3)				User Contributed Perl Documentation			      Regexp::Common::delimited(3)

NAME
Regexp::Common::delimited -- provides a regex for delimited strings SYNOPSIS
use Regexp::Common qw /delimited/; while (<>) { /$RE{delimited}{-delim=>'"'}/ and print 'a " delimited string'; /$RE{delimited}{-delim=>'/'}/ and print 'a / delimited string'; } DESCRIPTION
Please consult the manual of Regexp::Common for a general description of the works of this interface. Do not use this module directly, but load it via Regexp::Common. $RE{delimited}{-delim}{-esc} Returns a pattern that matches a single-character-delimited substring, with optional internal escaping of the delimiter. When "-delim=S" is specified, each character in the sequence S is a possible delimiter. There is no default delimiter, so this flag must always be specified. If "-esc=S" is specified, each character in the sequence S is the delimiter for the corresponding character in the "-delim=S" list. The default escape is backslash. For example: $RE{delimited}{-delim=>'"'} # match "a " delimited string" $RE{delimited}{-delim=>'"'}{-esc=>'"'} # match "a "" delimited string" $RE{delimited}{-delim=>'/'} # match /a / delimited string/ $RE{delimited}{-delim=>q{'"}} # match "string" or 'string' Under "-keep" (See Regexp::Common): $1 captures the entire match $2 captures the opening delimiter (provided only one delimiter was specified) $3 captures delimited portion of the string (provided only one delimiter was specified) $4 captures the closing delimiter (provided only one delimiter was specified) $RE{quoted}{-esc} A synonym for $RE{delimited}{q{-delim='"`}{...}} SEE ALSO
Regexp::Common for a general description of how to use this interface. AUTHOR
Damian Conway (damian@conway.org) MAINTAINANCE
This package is maintained by Abigail (regexp-common@abigail.be). BUGS AND IRRITATIONS
Bound to be plenty. For a start, there are many common regexes missing. Send them in to regexp-common@abigail.be. LICENSE and COPYRIGHT This software is Copyright (c) 2001 - 2009, Damian Conway and Abigail. This module is free software, and maybe used under any of the following licenses: 1) The Perl Artistic License. See the file COPYRIGHT.AL. 2) The Perl Artistic License 2.0. See the file COPYRIGHT.AL2. 3) The BSD Licence. See the file COPYRIGHT.BSD. 4) The MIT Licence. See the file COPYRIGHT.MIT. perl v5.18.2 2013-03-08 Regexp::Common::delimited(3)
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