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Full Discussion: How to remove leading and trailing spaces for variable in shell script?
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting How to remove leading and trailing spaces for variable in shell script? Post 303024913 by Don Cragun on Friday 19th of October 2018 02:42:28 AM
Old 10-19-2018
If there aren't any embedded <space>s in your variable, the command:
Code:
tablename=${tablename// /}

will remove all of the leading and trailing (and embedded) <space>s in your variable. If there are embedded <space>s you need to preserve you can use:
Code:
while [[ $tablename != ${tablename# } ]]
do	tablename=${tablename# }	# Remove one leading <space> from tablename.
done
while [[ $tablename != ${tablename% } ]]
do	tablename=${tablename% }	# Remove one trailing <space> from tablename.
done
printf 'Updated tablename with zero or more embedded spaces is "%s"\n' "$tablename"

Neither of the above are portable scripts, but all should work in your environment.

For a script meeting your requirements that should work with any shell that performs all of the expansions required by the POSIX standards, you could try
Code:
while [ "$tablename" != "${tablename# }" ]
do	tablename=${tablename# }	# Remove one leading <space> from tablename.
done
while [ "$tablename" != "${tablename% }" ]
do	tablename=${tablename% }	# Remove one trailing <space> from tablename.
done
printf 'Updated tablename with zero or more embedded spaces is "%s"\n' "$tablename"

 

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