Shell Programming and Scripting

Hey all,

I've come across a problem that I can't solve. Its as simple as it can get.
I want to substitute spaces in a string with dots e.g.

Code:

i am a string 
i.am.a.string

I've tried examples from the web that should work but they don't.
A period seems to become a space for some reason :s

One of the examples I used is this one:

Code:

echo ${zone// /"."}

zone being a string and replacing the "." with a "_" results in the spaces being substituted with underscores (which is the result I need) but it only works with underscores and not with periods as in the example. Instead of dots I get spaces.

Anyone know why this is and how to fix it?

Code:

echo 'i   am a string' | sed 's/ /./g'

This works for me:

Code:

echo ${zone// /.}

found the problem...
in the beginning of my script I issued IFS to split on periods and I don't know why (I know you guys do ) but I had to set IFS to " " i.e. a space in order to make it work

This is why you should always post your script, not just the tiny bit of it you think's the problem. Sometimes it's taken pages of yelling to discover they changed IFS somewhere

Whenever I must change IFS, this is what I do:

Code:

# Sometimes you can get away with just prefixing it
while IFS="." read A B C

If I must change it for a whole block I do this:

Code:

OLDIFS="$IFS"
IFS="."
        # Indented section where IFS is weird
# Put back the default
IFS="$OLDIFS"

You can also use `tr`

Code:

echo $zone | tr -s " " "."