help with echo command in reading blank spaces in aix

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

I have a test.txt and would like to put in a different file but while putting in the other file, blank spaces are missing.

$ indicates blank spaces

filename: test.txt:

USA$$$840$$$$

Desired output

USA$$$840$$$$

Current output as per the following code.

while read j;
do 
  echo "${j}" >> out.txt
done < test.txt

Output:

out.txt

USA$$$840

Thx

2

read use IFS values to parse line, space is part of IFS (input field separator).
So you need to change space => Ctrl-A (ascii 1), then read line

cat test.txt | tr " " "\001" | while read line
do
        # convert back Ascii-1 to space
        echo "$line" | tr "\001" " "
done >out.txt

Or using some other delimiter as "white space", ex. set ASCII 1 is input delimiter

while IFS="\001" read line
do
        echo "$line"
done < test.txt > out2.txt
3

You can just set IFS to an empty string:

IFS=""

That will guarantee that no field splitting is done and that leading/trailing whitespace is not discarded in the process. Choosing some seldom seen character/byte as the value for IFS always incurs the risk that the splitting will occur on that value if it rears its head.

Regards,
alister

4

Gr8..thanks..this is working..)