delete empty spaces at specific column

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi All,

If anybody could help me with my scenario here. I have a statement file. Example of some content:

     DATE          DESC      Debit    Credit    Total    Rate
    02-Jan-08   Lodgement   200.00            1200.00    2.51
    14-Sep-07   Withdrawal            50.00   1000.00    2.51
    29-Oct-06   Lodgement   100.00            1050.00    2.51

What I want to achieve here is to remove couple of empty spaces between column Total and Rate. Any lines that start with date (eg. as date above 02-Jan-08,14-Sep-07,29-Oct-06), I want to remove lets say 2 empty spaces between Total value and Rate value. Date always starts after 8 spaces. Can this be done with sed or awk? I'm totaly lost here. At the moment the Rate value is out of the box (special statement paper). I want to put inside this special box. Hence I need o remove 2 spaces or perhaps more. Need to play around until get the right way.

Thanks.

2

Try cutting position 54 and 55 for instance:

cut -c-53,56- infile
3

Hi,

Thank you for replying.

But how do I go about doing it in every first occurrence of date after 8 white spaces? The statement itself has header and footer. Basically I need the header and footer untouch and only delete 2 spaces between Total column and Rate column. If I use cut, then I'm going to lose some of the data. I need to delete 2 whitespaces on every line that starts with date. Example as above.

Thanks again.

4

Perhaps:

sed '/-/s/  */  /5' infile
5

Hmm. My data all over the places. I just want to remove 2 white spaces between Total and Rate value on every occurrence of date listed above.

Thanks anyway for replying.

6

I think the structure your file is in the header you have extra tabs between date and description

assuming the field separator is tab

awk -F "\t" '{if (/DATE/) {print $0} else {print $1"\t"$2"\t"$3"\t"$4"\t"$5"\t"$6"  "$7} } ' abc.txt

Replace $6" "$7 with as many spaces needed

HTH,
PL

7

Hi,

No tab involve. Just plain spaces. I will try this code and get back to you. Probably it would work by looking at the code.

Thanks.

8

If tab is not involved then replace "\t" with the number of spaces present in the file

9

Please provide a sample that is representative for your actual data:

$ sed '/-/s/  */  /5' infile

     DATE          DESC      Debit    Credit    Total    Rate
    02-Jan-08   Lodgement   200.00            1200.00  2.51
    14-Sep-07   Withdrawal            50.00   1000.00  2.51
    29-Oct-06   Lodgement   100.00            1050.00  2.51