Searching a file with exclusion in the search


 
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# 1  
Old 11-27-2008
Searching a file with exclusion in the search

Hello,
I'm looking for a bit of help. Im trying to search a file for lines that contain white spaces at the end of the lines. This is what I'm using where $param is the path and file name and it redirects the output to a txt file :

echo | grep -n ' $' $param >> $2

Is it possible to have exclusions within my expression?
I want to search for white spaces but not ones that are tabs(\t) and ones that start with (#) or('^#) or ones that just have a space a the start of a line ('^ $').

Maybe its possible to filter it through by using pipe but im not sure how to do this.

Any help would be great. Thanks.
# 2  
Old 11-27-2008
Try this with sed:

Code:
sed -n '/^[a-zA-Z1-9].* $/p' "$param " > "$2"

Regards
# 3  
Old 11-27-2008
Thanks. That works good but that won't exclude lines that have a tab character at the end or lines. Also I mean to mention that id like to exclude lines that start with the whitspace character.

Sorry if im not explaing myself clearly.

Last edited by gintreach; 11-27-2008 at 11:48 AM.. Reason: Tested it some more
# 4  
Old 11-27-2008
It works for me, this is an example of a file. All the lines except the line that ends with a tab contain a space as last character. The output is only the line with a space at the end of the line.

Code:
$ cat file
 start with a space 
    start with a tab 
space as last character 
tab as last character    
#start with # 
^#start with ^# 
$
$
$ sed -n '/^[a-zA-Z1-9].* $/p' file
space as last character
$

# 5  
Old 11-28-2008
Ya, sorry Franklin, it does work. It was just another problem in my script giving me trouble.

My final command im using is this
sed -n '/^[a-zA-Z1-9].*[ \t]$/p' $param >> $2
You can probably see im also looking for line that finish in a tab also and redirecting my output to another file.

Just have one final question. Can I also output the line number of my results?
I'm trying to use the = command but getting results with the line number appear above the line rather than along side it. Do you know is there a simpler way?

Thanks so far for your help.
# 6  
Old 11-28-2008
Use awk instead of sed:

Code:
awk '/^[a-zA-Z1-9].*[ \t]$/{print ++i, $0}' file

Regards
# 7  
Old 12-01-2008
Hi again.
That outputs the line number of the resulting file, but is it possible to output the line number of the file that the result was found in??

Don't think I was too clear in my question, sorry.
 
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