Shell Programming and Scripting

I would like to find an undetermined number of spaces and shorten them to one space. I am running Debian in mksh. Script running in #!/bin/sh. Sorry to not include all code. The program is too big and involves an online file... too much hassle to solve a simple issue.


Ex.,

I start with (pretend the periods are spaces),

"This . . . . sentence has . . . . . . an undetermined . . number of . spaces between . . . . . . each word."


The result would be:

"This sentence has an undetermined number of spaces."


What I have so far is working but extremely poor code:

Code:

        {gsub (/  /, " ")}
        {gsub (/  /, " ")}
        {gsub (/  /, " ")}
        {gsub (/  /, " ")}
        {gsub (/  /, " ")}
        {gsub (/  /, " ")}
        {gsub (/  /, " ")}
        {gsub (/  /, " ")}

I've tried several combinations to no effect. I've been reading up on awk in a tutorial, but so far no mention of this situation.

Did you consider the

Code:

tr -s

command?

This looks like a great program for one/two job operations, and I'll likely use it for other tasks now that I know it exists; but, I wanted to stick with awk and keep the programs to a minimum.

I should have mentioned that.

Try:

Code:

awk '{$1=$1}1' file

What is does is translate the default field separator (one or more space or TAB characters) to the default output separator (a single space).

I was just about to post that I was not looking for the above code. I have used this, and it collapses return keys and other useful characters.

I only want to reduce spaces beyond a single space to a single space using awk.

Sorry for the runaround.

Try also

Code:

awk '{gsub (/ +/, " ")}1' file

or

Code:

awk '{gsub (/  */, " ")}1' file

Both work perfectly! I was so close; I had only to add another space before the asterik in the second method and it would have worked!

Thank you all!