UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Open to a sed/awk/or perl alternative so that i can stick command into my bash script.

This is a problem I resolve using a combination of cut commands - but that is getting convoluted. So would really appreciate it if someone could provide a better solution which basically replaces all spaces before and prior to the | sign while keeping the spaces that is part of the data.

I have fixed width file delimted by |:

Code:

John   | Doe    | 1234 Long Street Name    |NY
Mary   | H      |Short Addr                |CA

(HTML screws this up, so assume that all the pipe's are all lined up and that first name starts on 1st position, last name always starts at the 20th position, address starts at 40, State starts at 80 - sure u guys get the idea).

Since each column have varying spaces before the | delimiter, how can I quickly remove all the unnecessary spaces and make this a normal csv file instead of a fixed width file. What i want to see is:

Code:

John,Doe,1234 Long Street Name,NY
Mary,H,Short Addr,CA

Thanks much ... one of those problems that drive me crazy :-)

Code:

perl -pe 's/ *\|/|/g;s/\| */,/g' file

Code:

 sed 's/ *| */,/g' file

or a shortened version of bartus11's

Code:

perl -pe 's/ *\| */,/g' file

One of those things that is clear as day once you see it. Thanks Much for everyone's help!