Remove all first spaces in a text file

[Arjen Verhulst]

Hello all,

The output from my scripts generates a textfile. I want delete only the first space characters from the lines in that output file.

Can someone help me?

Thanks,

Arjen

[Stephen Keane]

cat your_file | sed -e "s/^[ \t]*//" > new_file

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

Arjen,

From Handy One-Liners For Sed (attached):

# delete leading whitespace (spaces, tabs) from front of each line
# aligns all text flush left
sed 's/^[ \t]*//' # '\t'=tab (see note at end of file)


Pete

[Arjen Verhulst]

It's working !!

Thanks for the reply

[Suraj Singh_1]

ANother method from within "vi" editor:

try following command (without "):
:%s/ //g

Regards,
Suraj

[Dani Seely]

Arjen,
Suraj has a good idea, only not quite correct. Within vi, to remove all leading spaces from the file you will want to do the following:
:1,$s/^ //g

Have a great day!

[Suraj Singh_1]

Hi Dani,

You may try '%s' in place of '1,$s' (of course without ').

Both these syntax are same.

Regards