Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello Friends,

Can any one help me with this issue:

I would like to format a file:

say if I have rows like:

4512 , SMITH , I-28984 ,, 4324 , 4343
42312 , SMITH , I-2EE8984 ,, 432E4E4 , 4343


I would like to have the output diaplayed like :
4512 ,SMITH,I-28984,,4324, 4343
42312, SMITH, I-2EE8984 ,,432E4E4,4343


Thanks in advance for your help

Sam

I have tried using

cat file_name.txt | tr -s " " ","

this is overwriting the blank spaces


S1234, A98 76 , A6789 , , , , A5677 , 3452
S9087 , A4562 , A1367 , A2678 , D7891

Displays:
S1234,A98,76,A6789,A5677,3452
S9087,A4562,A1367,A2678,D7891


It should be:

S1234,A98 76,A6789,,,,A5677,3452
S9087,A4562,A1367,A2678,D7891


Thanks

If you search for "remove spaces" in this forum, there are a lot of answers out there. One should work for you.

Code:

awk '$1=$1' OFS= infile # use nawk on Solaris

great it worked

Thanks a lot

with this command it is cupressing all spaces,
I would like to have format something like this


if input has:

4545, SMITH MICHAEL ,584 Parkview , MD


It should display
4545,SMITH MICHAEL,584 Parkview,MD


Thank you

Code:

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

sed 's/ *, */,/g' infile