sed or awk editing help


 
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# 1  
Old 10-29-2010
Question sed or awk editing help

Hi all

I use aix (sadly).

I've got a file consisting of fields separated by commas, I need a sed or awk command that will delete all spaces between two commas as long as there are only spaces between the commas.

eg
Code:
,abc,    ,sd , ,dr at

would become
Code:
,abc,,sd ,,dr at

I have tried sed -e 's/, .*,/,,/g' but it does not work.

any ideas?

thanks in anticipation Smilie

Last edited by Scott; 11-01-2010 at 04:32 PM.. Reason: Code tags
# 2  
Old 10-29-2010
Leading and trailing space: fair game or verboten? This does just all-spaces:
Code:
 sed '
  s/,  *,/,,/g
  s/,  *,/,,/g
 '

Narrative: Substitute for comma, then space, then any number of spaces, then a comma: a comma comma. Repeat for adjscent fields of spaces (can be in second piped sed for speed).

This does leading and trailing, too:
Code:
sed '
  s/,  */,/g
  s/  *,/,/g
 '

Narraitve: Substitute for a comma, then a space, then any number of spaces: a comma (trim leading spaces). Substitute for a space, then any number of spaces, then a comma: a comma (trim trailing spaces).
# 3  
Old 10-29-2010
Code:
# echo ',abc, ,sd,                 ,dr at' | sed 's/, */,/g'
,abc,,sd,,dr at

# 4  
Old 10-29-2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by danmero
Code:
# echo ',abc, ,sd,                 ,dr at' | sed 's/, */,/g'
,abc,,sd,,dr at

You get leading spaces of fields with data, which is sometimes nice but outside this requirement.
This User Gave Thanks to DGPickett For This Post:
# 5  
Old 10-30-2010
If Perl is an option then -

Code:
$
$
$ echo "   ,abc,  def,ghi,   ,     ,  jk lm,   " | perl -plne 's/(^| *), */,/g'
,abc,def,ghi,,,jk lm,
$
$

tyler_durden
# 6  
Old 10-30-2010
This takes out space-only fields at the beginning and end as well, while leaving all other spaces intact.
Code:
sed 's/\(^\|,\) *\(,\|$\)/\1\2/g'

GNU sed -r :
Code:
sed -r 's/(^|,) *(,|$)/\1\2/g'

# 7  
Old 10-30-2010
additional If you have spaces and also tabs you can use Smilie
Code:
# sed 's/,[[:space:]]*,/,,/g' infile

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