Removing trailing spaces from delimited files

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi All

I have a file of the following format (delimited by |)

this is field 1 | field 2 (lots of blank spaces) | field 3 (lots of blank space) |
field 1 | more text (lots of blank spaces) | dhjdsk |

Is there a way I can remove trailing spaces between the end of the text in each field and the delimiter? E.g. I would like to end up with the following...

this is field 1 | field 2 | field 3 |
field 1 | more text | dhjdsk |

Is this possible?

2

i could not spot any difference bet i/p and o/p

is this what you are looking for :slight_smile:

echo "a  | b  | c |" | sed "s/[' ']*|/|/g"

o/p: a| b| c|

3

works like a charm.... thanks mate :smiley:

4

sed -e "s/[' ']*|/|/g" $FILE

Using the line of code above, i get trailing spaces to be removed between the end of the field and the delimiter. I was hoping someone might explain how the command knows to take from the last space.

For example, if i have a field a row in $FILE such as...

this is field 1 | this is field 2 | a lot of text in field 3

...how does the command know to remove the space after the "1" instead of taking everything after the first space, i.e., after "this".

Any explanation would be hugely appreciated.

5

try to concentrate on regex "[' ']*|". It means zero or more spaces followes by bar "|".

"[' ']*|" is replaced by "|".

hope its clear now.

6

[' ']*| Means all blanks ' ' before | , sed changes that for |.
You can see it better with an example:

echo "a        ssdddddddd| b       | c |" | sed "s/[d]*|/ |/g"
OUPUT:
a        ss | b        | c  |

Regards.

7

thanks guys for your replies. this has helped me to understand :slight_smile: