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Remove blank columns from a tab delimited text file

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# 1  
Old 10-23-2014
Remove blank columns from a tab delimited text file
Hello,

I have some tab delimited files that may contain blank columns. I would like to delete the blank columns if they exist. There is no clear pattern for when a blank occurs.

I was thinking of using sed to replace instances of double tab with blank,
sed 's/\t\t//g'

All of the examples I have seen are two consecutive blanks columns. I don't believe that there will be instanced of more than two blank cols, but it's hard to say. It would be nice to have code that was more generic.

LMHmedchem
# 2  
Old 10-23-2014
How about: tr -s '\t' < inputfile > outputfile

One, two, three four, or three hundred tabs in a row will become one tab.
These 2 Users Gave Thanks to Corona688 For This Post:
Chubler_XL LMHmedchem
# 3  
Old 10-23-2014
Thanks, that did the trick.

LMHmedchem
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