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Delete Multiple White Spaces

 
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# 1  
Old 03-01-2007
Power Delete Multiple White Spaces
Hi,

I have a file that has multiple spaces between characters. I want to delete or convert the multiple spaces into a single space. I think this can be done in "sed" but I only know the syntax to delete trailing or leading spaces. Can this be done with "sed" or awk?

I have a file that looks like this:
Code:
02-15-07  02:59PM                11264 approvalcategory.rpt
02-15-07  02:59PM                12800 approvalclassaudit.rpt

I want it to look like this:
Code:
02-15-07 02:59PM 11264 approvalcategory.rpt
02-15-07 02:59PM 12800 approvalclass audit.rpt

Last edited by Yogesh Sawant; 04-21-2008 at 06:12 AM.. Reason: added code tags
# 2  
Old 03-01-2007
Quote:
Originally Posted by eja
Hi,

I have a file that has multiple spaces between characters. I want to delete or convert the multiple spaces into a single space. I think this can be done in "sed" but I only know the syntax to delete trailing or leading spaces. Can this be done with "sed" or awk?

I have a file that looks like this:

02-15-07 02:59PM 11264 approvalcategory.rpt
02-15-07 02:59PM 12800 approvalclassaudit.rpt

I want it to look like this:

02-15-07 02:59PM 11264 approvalcategory.rpt
02-15-07 02:59PM 12800 approvalclass audit.rpt
try this
Note: this works only if the number of spaces are same

Code:
sed -n "1,$s/               / /g" filename

# 3  
Old 03-01-2007
Code:
sed -e "s/[ \t]*/ /g" in.txt

\t stands for the tab character i.e. Ctrl-V+Tab
# 4  
Old 03-01-2007
Code:
sed "s/^ *//;s/ *$//;s/ \{1,\}/ /g" file

s/^ *// deletes spaces at the start of the line
s/ *$// deletes spaces at the end of the line
# 5  
Old 03-01-2007
Wow,

Thank you for such a quick response. I tried these and the 3rd suggested post works best for what I need.

Thank you again.
# 6  
Old 04-17-2008
A problem with space within " " which i don't want to remove
i am actually same kind of command to remove extra whitespaces, but in my file (.csv), i have couple of data with white space in between quotes.
(""). I don't want to remove those white spaces.

This is file:
Code:
"aaaaaa"         ,"aaaaaa"
"sss" ,"ddd"
"ddd" ,"F"   ,"fff      fffffF"

I want the output to be like this:
Code:
"aaaaaa","aaaaaa"
"sss","ddd"
"ddd","F","fff      fffffF"

But i am using :
Code:
$ sed "s/^ *//;s/ *$//;s/ \{1,\}//g" <data.csv> data1.csv

i am getting :
Code:
"aaaaaa","aaaaaa"
"sss","ddd"
"ddd","F","ffffffffF"

can anybody suggest anything so that i can keep the whitespaces inside "" (double quotes) but still remove the other spaces?

Thx.
Last edited by Yogesh Sawant; 04-21-2008 at 06:15 AM.. Reason: added code tags
# 7  
Old 04-18-2008
Use this script

Code:
sed -e's/" *,/",/g' -e's/, *"/,"/g'

Last edited by Yogesh Sawant; 04-21-2008 at 06:14 AM.. Reason: added code tags
 
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