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Replace blanks with | (pipe)

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# 1  
Old 10-05-2010
Replace blanks with | (pipe)
Hello,

I'm trying to replace the first x number of spaces in a line with a |. Right now I'm using a very inefficient syntax to accomplish the task and was looking to simplify it.

I have several cases were the pipes need to replace just the first space on the line, which I did a simple replace. I am doing this while reading each line of a file that I'm cat'ing.

Code:
v_sec=`echo $line | sed 's/ /|/'`

The ugly code comes in when I need to replace the first 11 spaces with pipes and ended up doing this:

Code:
		v_bar1=`echo $line | sed 's/ /|/'`
			v_bar2=`echo $v_bar1 | sed 's/ /|/'`
			v_bar3=`echo $v_bar2 | sed 's/ /|/'`
			v_bar4=`echo $v_bar3 | sed 's/ /|/'`
			v_bar5=`echo $v_bar4 | sed 's/ /|/'`
			v_bar6=`echo $v_bar5 | sed 's/ /|/'`
			v_bar7=`echo $v_bar6 | sed 's/ /|/'`
			v_bar8=`echo $v_bar7 | sed 's/ /|/'`
			v_bar9=`echo $v_bar8 | sed 's/ /|/'`
			v_bar10=`echo $v_bar9 | sed 's/ /|/'`
			v_bar_final=`echo $v_bar10 | sed 's/ /|/'`

Any suggestions to simplify would be appreciated. Smilie
# 2  
Old 10-05-2010
hi,
Do you mean 11 spaces in the beginning?

Code:
sed -s 's/^    */|/' input

Here im finding for 4 or more spaces to substitute.you can increase it if your file has 4 spaces or more use {n} option.

Code:
sed -s 's/^ \{11\}/|/' input

Input:
Code:
           
test           make
           check           this

output:
Code:
|
test           make
|check           this

# 3  
Old 10-05-2010
Try:
Code:
sed ':a;s/^\(|*\) /\1|/;ta'

or
Code:
sed -e :a -e 's/^\(|*\) /\1|/;ta'

Code:
$ echo "           xxx xx xxxxx  yyyy" | sed ':a;s/^\(|*\) /\1|/;ta'
|||||||||||xxx xx xxxxx  yyyy

Last edited by Scrutinizer; 10-05-2010 at 11:23 AM..
# 4  
Old 10-05-2010
My apologizes, I should have been more specific. The data looks like this:

Dataset1 Dataset2 Dataset3 etc etc etc A B C D E F G blah blah blah


Required output would then be:

Dataset1|Dataset2|Dataset3|etc|etc|etc|A|B|C|D|E|F G blah blah blah
# 5  
Old 10-05-2010
Code:
$ ruby -ane 'print "#{$F[0..11].join("|")} #{$F[12..-1].join(" ")}\n"' file
Dataset1|Dataset2|Dataset3|etc|etc|etc|A|B|C|D|E|F G blah blah blah

# 6  
Old 10-05-2010
I'm not comfortable using ruby, as this is the first time I have heard of it.
# 7  
Old 10-05-2010
Code:
awk '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){s=(i<12)?"|":FS;if(i==NF)s=RS;printf $i s}}' file

Last edited by Scrutinizer; 10-05-2010 at 03:53 PM..
This User Gave Thanks to Scrutinizer For This Post:
bd_joy
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