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deleting white spaces

 
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# 8  
Old 02-17-2004
Hi, I tried the script, and it works. Only one thing, what if express1 in the script actually contains spaces? It didn't work when that happened. Please advise. Thanks.
# 9  
Old 02-17-2004
In that case, you can just surround the variables in quotes:
Code:
express1="here is the"
express2="and lastly a third line"

tomove=`grep "^$express1" myfile | sed 's/^'"$express1"'//'`

sed 's/^'"$express1$tomove"'/'"$express1"'/' myfile > tmpfile

sed 's/^'"$express2"'/'"$express2$tomove"'/' tmpfile > myfile

rm tmpfile

# 10  
Old 02-17-2004
If there is a '/' character in the expression, it will be garbled. Any way to get around that?
# 11  
Old 02-17-2004
lol - it'd be better if you listed all these "what-ifs" at one time... Smilie

If you think there's a good chance of a slash being in the expression, you need to pick a character for sed that is very unlikely to be used in the expression:
Code:
...
...
sed 's=^'"$express1$tomove"'='"$express1"'=' myfile > tmpfile
...
...

Now you can have slashes as a part of your expression, but you can't have the equal sign.
 
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