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Removal of last-semicolons in line with sed

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# 1  
Old 10-13-2011
Removal of last-semicolons in line with sed
Hello,

I'm trying to remove an arbitrary number of semicolons at the end of each line in the input file.

Input:
Code:
 44;I;1000031;;;B;0137;0;;01.02.2008;03.02.2009;;;;;;;;;;;;;0028-101746;;;
 45;I;1000031;;;B;0137;0;;01.02.2008;03.02.2009;;;;;;;;;;;;;0028-101746;;;;;
 18026;I;1000031;;;B;0137;0;;03.12.2008;31.12.2999;;;;;;;;;;;;;842010;;;

Output:
Code:
 44;I;1000031;;;B;0137;0;;01.02.2008;03.02.2009;;;;;;;;;;;;;0028-101746
 45;I;1000031;;;B;0137;0;;01.02.2008;03.02.2009;;;;;;;;;;;;;0028-101746
 18026;I;1000031;;;B;0137;0;;03.12.2008;31.12.2999;;;;;;;;;;;;;842010

The closest I have come to a solution is this:
Code:
 sed 's/[ ;]*$//'

but doesn't work.

Please share some light - Thank you!
# 2  
Old 10-13-2011
Why you're saying that it doesn't work? What's the output?
Do you want to remove the trailing semicolons only or you need to remove the trailing white spaces too?
# 3  
Old 10-13-2011
Your sed command itself is working good .. Any error you got??
Code:
$ sed 's/[ ;]*$//' infile
44;I;1000031;;;B;0137;0;;01.02.2008;03.02.2009;;;;;;;;;;;;;0028-101746
 45;I;1000031;;;B;0137;0;;01.02.2008;03.02.2009;;;;;;;;;;;;;0028-101746
 18026;I;1000031;;;B;0137;0;;03.12.2008;31.12.2999;;;;;;;;;;;;;842010

# 4  
Old 10-13-2011
I don't want to remove trailing spaces, only the last semicolons ";" in the line.
it's not working for me; the output file is the same as the input file (no changes). Can it be because of the end of file character? I'm using GNU sed 4.1.2

Code:
[umbrella@wasp csv]$ cat aaa
asd asd asd asd asdas;das dasdasD;SAdasDAS;D;;;;;;
asdasdasd;ASDAS;DAS;D;ASdas;DAS;D;AS;;;;;;
asdasdasdas das d asd asd as d asd as

[umbrella@wasp csv]$ sed 's/[ \;]$//' aaa

asd asd asd asd asdas;das dasdasD;SAdasDAS;D;;;;;
asdasdasd;ASDAS;DAS;D;ASdas;DAS;D;AS;;;;;
asdasdasdas das d asd asd as d asd as

# 5  
Old 10-13-2011
Code:
# cat aaa
asd asd asd asd asdas;das dasdasD;SAdasDAS;D;;;;;;
asdasdasd;ASDAS;DAS;D;ASdas;DAS;D;AS;;;;;;
asdasdasdas das d asd asd as d asd as

Code:
# sed 's/[;]*$//g' aaa
asd asd asd asd asdas;das dasdasD;SAdasDAS;D
asdasdasd;ASDAS;DAS;D;ASdas;DAS;D;AS
asdasdasdas das d asd asd as d asd as

# 6  
Old 10-13-2011
You lost the '*'.

Also, if you're not removing whitespace you don't need it in the regexp:
Code:
# sed 's/;*$//' /tmp/aaa
asd asd asd asd asdas;das dasdasD;SAdasDAS;D
asdasdasd;ASDAS;DAS;D;ASdas;DAS;D;AS
asdasdasdas das d asd asd as d asd as

(GNU sed 4.1.5 on bash)
# 7  
Old 10-13-2011
I think I am getting close, thank you for the help!

When I vim the files where sed works I have regular end-of-line characters. When I open the original file I have ^M at the end of each line; that's the problem I suppose. Can I extend the sed command to also consider this ^M as an end of line?

---------- Post updated at 06:57 AM ---------- Previous update was at 06:47 AM ----------

thank you guys, dos2unix fixes the issue. I run it on the initial file, then sed works properly!
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