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Converting a text file with irregular spacing into a space delimited text file?

 
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# 1  
Old 09-01-2011
Converting a text file with irregular spacing into a space delimited text file?
I have a text file with irregular spacing between values which makes it really difficult to manipulate. Is there an easy way to convert it into a space delimited text file so that all the spaces, double spaces, triple spaces, tabs between numbers are converted into spaces. The file looks like this:

Code:
1331  1 12 13 1  93.620   0.960  -0.420  57.410   1/  2   1/  1   1/  1   1/  2   
 1331  2 14 15 2  91.230   0.670 -99.999  49.980   0/  0   1/  2   1/  1   1/  2   
 1331  3  1  2 2  87.490   0.620 -99.999  47.890   1/  2   1/  2   1/  1   1/  2   
 1331  4  1  2 1  90.260   1.070 -99.999  63.810   0/  0   1/  1   1/  1   2/  2   
 1331  5  1  2 2  93.900   0.450 -99.999  57.440   1/  2   1/  1   1/  1   0/  0   
 1331  6  1  2 2  91.280   0.270 -99.999  59.970   1/  2   1/  1   1/  1   1/  2   
 1331  7  1  2 2  90.450   0.780  -0.090  51.850   1/  1   1/  2   1/  1   1/  1   
 1331  8  1  2 2  92.050   0.570   0.920  54.130   0/  0   1/  1   1/  1   0/  0

Thanks a lot!
Last edited by radoulov; 09-01-2011 at 06:01 PM.. Reason: Code tags, please!
# 2  
Old 09-01-2011
Code:
awk '{ $1=$1 } 1' < infile > outfile

should flatten it. The $1=$1 might look useless on first glance, but awk just prints the original lines unmodified if you don't modify any of the tokens -- this way it condenses the whitespace.
This User Gave Thanks to Corona688 For This Post:
evelibertine
# 3  
Old 09-01-2011
Code:
sed 's/[ \t]\{1,99\}/ /g' infile >outfile

(\t s/b a real tab)
# 4  
Old 09-01-2011
Code:
tr -s '\t' ' '

Regards,
Alister
# 5  
Old 09-02-2011
one more .. Smilie
Code:
$ awk '{ $(NF+1) = ""; print }' infile

# 6  
Old 09-05-2011
If it was all spaces, I wrote a delimiter I called colmark to turn the vertical columns of white space into pipe marks (ignoring random spaces). You could use 'pr -et' to expand any tabs appropriately, then use colmark to chop out the fields. Colmark is simple, could be done in shell, just make an array with a member '0' for each column and set to 1 if any line not space, then use that on a second pass to change successive spaces into pipes.
 
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