Scripting:Pls help.

[Dewa Negara_4]

Hi All,

Pls help. How can we exclude an empty space on a file, so the script won't read the empty space. Example, I have a file called file01 below :

one
two
#tree

four

five

If in the script I use this command #grep -v "#" file01|while read X, the empty space will be read by the script and give me the wrong result. How can we exclude the empty space on the command #grep -v "#" file01|while read X

Pls help.
Thanks in advance.

Best Regards,
Negara

[Dave La Mar]

Well, asumming the other entries contain no spaces:
grep -v " " or grep -v " "
etc.
Go for it. Best of luck.
There a multitude of ways to do this. I am just giving you a down and dirty quick fix.

Regards,
dl

[Dave La Mar]

Negara:
My second grep should have shown multiple spaces between the quotes. Don't know why it did not.
May be a forums issue for Dan.
dl

[Dewa Negara_4]

Dave,

Thanks. It still not working properly.

Can you pls help to give me other methods?

Thanks.
Negara

[curt larson_1]

awk '/^[^#]/ {print;}' file01 |
while read X

this will strip out empty lines and lines begining with #

[curt larson_1]

sed -e '/^$/d' -e '/.*#.*/d' |
while read X

[curt larson_1 · Accepted solution]

grep -vE "^$|#" file01 |
while read X

[isaac_loven]

You Must Get the book: "UNIX POWER TOOLS"
(also available second hand )
Also u can use the web. Check out:
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/UAU/advcomm/SED.html

Please Assign points.
Isaac.

[Dewa Negara_4]

Thanks for your great help.

It looks fine for me now.

Thanks again.

Best Regards,
Negara