Replace 1 or multiple spaces or tabs with a single space

[PatRoy]

Hi!

First, I'm using standard POSIX Shell. Not Bash.
Additionnally, it's HP's standard sed also. Not GNU Sed.

I'm trying to replace 1 or more spaces/tabs with a single on each occurrence.

In Perl, I think it would be something like this:

s/\s+/ /g

'\s' being recognize has either a space or tab.

I can't make it work with HPUX 11.11 or 11.23 sed. My script is already written in shell, so I was hopping not to go Perl.

Thanks.

Patrick

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi Patrick:

# echo "a b c"|tr -s [[:space:]] " "

Of course, the Forum will probably lose the multiple spaces and tabs in this example!

Regards!

...JRF...

[Patrick Wallek]

Hi Patrick,

Try using tr instead.

tr -s [:space:] " "

will do what you want. To use tr you can do:

tr -s [:space:] " " < testfile

To get the output to a file:

tr -s [:space:] " " < testfile > testfile.new

you can also do:

cat testfile | tr -s [:space:] " " > testfile2

You have all kinds of options.

[spex]

Hi,

Give 'tr -s ...' a try:

$ tr -s " \t" " " < filein > fileout

PCS

[Peter Nikitka]

Hi,

this will do it (it's [spaceTAB]):
sed '/s[ ][ ]*/ /g'

Enter a real tab for .
If you don not want to convert TAB(s) to space (like in your example), but to a single TAB, use - untested -
sed -e 's/ */ /g' -e 's/ ** *//g'

First is 'spacespace*', last is 'space*TABTABspace*'.

mfG Peter

[PatRoy]

Thanks James and others!

tr -s [:space:] " " didn't work for me. Had tried it like that, but doesn't do it.

You somehow need 2 set of square brakets: [[:space:]]

That did it.
Thanks again!

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again) Patrick:

Please consider assigning points for the help you have been offered in this and your other threads as listed in your profile.

...JRF...