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Cant get the data I want

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# 1  
Old 08-06-2008
Cant get the data I want
Basically I have data that seems to have spaces or some other char that I can not see, please read below:

1/ When I run the command: "cat file | sed 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9+_:-@]//g' | sed 's|.*ex:Msg\(.*\)ex:Msg.*|\1|' " the extracted data within the ex:Msg tags which contains text with spaces is extracted correctly without any spaces which are taken out by the former sed command.

2/ When I change the former sed 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9+_:-@]//g' to include spaces sed 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9 +_:-@]//g' the whole data I send to the command is extracted, this includes data within the ex:Msg tags, this is not what I want.

3/ When I first replace the space with say a # by using the sed -e 's/ /#/g' before extracting the ex:Msg portion I still get the same result as 2 but the spaces are now #

Hence, I am not sure if it is the spaces that is causing the problem, but when I remove them completely everything works, though I need the spaces within the text.

Any ideas what I can do to resolve this problem
# 2  
Old 08-06-2008
Try doing a cat -vet on the original file, it should show any hidden characters. Also file file should tell you if it is anything other than plain text.

Failing that it is difficult to diagnose without a sample of the source data, I can't see any obvious problem with your second sed script... seems to work fine for me with or without spaces:

Code:
$ echo "foo bar ex:MsgInteresting Text Here!ex:Msg blah yak" | sed 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9+_:-@]//g' | sed 's|.*ex:Msg\(.*\)ex:Msg.*|\1|'
InterestingTextHere
$ echo "foo bar ex:MsgInteresting Text Here!ex:Msg blah yak" | sed 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9 +_:-@]//g' | sed 's|.*ex:Msg\(.*\)ex:Msg.*|\1|'
Interesting Text Here
$

What operating system, version of sed, etc. are you using?
# 3  
Old 08-07-2008
Thank you Annihilannic
I did a cat -vet, it did not show anything peculair. However, I solved the problem by cutting the portion of the data I was interested in and passing it to the sed command.
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