UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi experts,

Could someone help me how to figure out the following substitution?

I copied and pasted a column of names from an Excel file into another file in vi. The column of data has last names with dash (hyphens) and apostrophes. My goal is to do the following:
1) remove the apostrophes and hyphens in the name

Example:

John D'Maloney
Mandy O'Neal
Joe Jackson-Smith

Please assist. Thanks!

in vi editor mode

Code:

:%s/'//g
:%s/-//g

Hi,

Try this one,

Code:

:%s/\([a-zA-Z]\)['-]\([a-zA-Z]\)/\1 \2/g

' and - wil replace by space.

Cheers,
Ranga

Hi Ranga,

For some reason, but your command substituted only one line. Does my cursor has to be at the end for file?

Thanks!

---------- Post updated at 12:19 PM ---------- Previous update was at 11:38 AM ----------

Hi Ningy,

Thank you for your post; the command worked. My next dilema is that the names in my file has a space after the apostrophe.

Example:

John D' Smith
Jane M' Doe

So what should I include to remove the white space to make the part before apostrophe and part after to combine.

Example:

John D' Smith --> John DSmith

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Do them all at once with this beautiful command (separate the different search/replaces with a pipe symbol):

Code:

:%s/' //g|%s/'//g|%s/-//g

Or even shorter and less understandable

Code:

:%s#'\|-\|' ##g

In my version of vi I get "substitute pattern match failed" :-(