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Removing one or more blank characters from beginning of a line

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# 1  
Old 07-09-2012
Removing one or more blank characters from beginning of a line
Hi,

I was trying to remove the blank from beginning of a line.

when I try:

Code:
sed 's/^ +//' filename

it does not work
but when I try
Code:
sed 's/^ *//' filename

it works
But I think the first command should have also replaced any line with one or more blanks.
Kindly help me in understanding why the first command did not work.
# 2  
Old 07-09-2012
Which variant of sed did you try that on? Remember, not all seds support the quantifier '+'; GNU sed supports this quantifier.

Alternatively, you can try perl,
Code:
perl -pe 's/^ +//g' filename

# 3  
Old 07-09-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by babom
Hi,

I was trying to remove the blank from beginning of a line.

when I try:

Code:
sed 's/^ +//' filename

it does not work
but when I try
Code:
sed 's/^ *//' filename

it works
But I think the first command should have also replaced any line with one or more blanks.
Kindly help me in understanding why the first command did not work.
try like this Smilie [use the backslash for escape the plus_metacharacter in ext. regex expres]
Code:
# sed 's/^ \+//' infile

This User Gave Thanks to ygemici For This Post:
babom
# 4  
Old 07-09-2012
The +-operator is only supported in extended regex, standard sed only supports basic regex. So it would have worked if your sed (BSD,GNU) supports the -E option.

In regular sed:
Code:
sed 's/^ \{1,\}//' filename

But in this case a plain asterisk should work too:
Code:
sed 's/^ *//' filename



--
Note: \+ is GNU sed only
# 5  
Old 07-09-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scrutinizer

--
Note: \+ is GNU sed only
yes Smilie, it is a GNU extension.
# 6  
Old 07-09-2012
Thanks guys, it worked with
Code:
\+

.
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