How to replace spaces excluding those within double quotes and after backslash?


 
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# 1  
Old 01-28-2012
How to replace spaces excluding those within double quotes and after backslash?

In bash or perl, I would like to know how to substitute a null character (0x00) for every white space without changing the white spaces inside the block of double quotes and the white space immediately following a backslash.

Suppose that sample.txt consists of the following line.

"b 1" c\ 2

The above line contains three spaces. However, I would like to replace only the space immediately before c.

The following command undesirably replaced all the three spaces, ignoring quotes and backslashes.

Code:
perl -p -e 's/ /\x00/g' sample.txt > null.txt


I need the special meaning of double quotes and backslash to be honored.

Other substitution tools I can think of are the tr and sed commands on bash. However, I do not even know how to substitute a null character using tr or sed.

Many thanks in advance.
# 2  
Old 01-28-2012
something like this ?

Code:
$ echo "\"b 1\" c\ 2" | perl -pe 's/\" /\"\x00/g'
"b 1"c\ 2

# 3  
Old 01-28-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by itkamaraj
Code:
$ echo "\"b 1\" c\ 2" | perl -pe 's/\" /\"\x00/g'
"b 1"c\ 2



No, that is not what I want. Do not rely on the coincidence that the space I want to remove happens to follow a closing double quote.

Last edited by LessNux; 01-28-2012 at 11:54 PM..
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