Removing spaces from the output of a head command

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Im running the below commands in a script.

Total_confirms=`cat $OUTPATH/count_po* | head -4 | tail -1`
#
echo "Total Confirms records we need: $Total_confirms" >> $LOG2

The problem is its always returning 4 spaces before the result.. Can I pipe the result into something else to remove the spaces.. was looking at the cut command but don't think it applies here.

I'm just trying to align the output so it's not all over the place..

2

to skip over the first four places

cut -c5-

should do the trick

3

Thanks, works nicely..

Didn't know cut would do that..

4

Just another question regarding the cut command... have been messing around with it but cant get it working properly.. how do you type the cut command to just return the time 07:37:43 from the below line?

job_1 12/10/2008 07:37:43 12/10/2008 11:22:10 SU 23464234/1

5 
> echo job_1 12/10/2008 07:37:43 12/10/2008 11:22:10 SU 23464234/1 | cut -d" " -f3
07:37:43

or
[since awk assumes space or tab as delimiter]

> echo job_1 12/10/2008 07:37:43 12/10/2008 11:22:10 SU 23464234/1 | awk '{print $3}'
07:37:43
6

Thanks again... I'll stick with the cut... Its easier..