Trimming a string

Hi I need to trim white spaces from strings in a file.
Input file is like this:

1_rrc_CatalogGroups.csv = 607
1_rrc_Sales_TopCatalogGroups.csv = 4 
1_rrc_Sales_CatalogEntries_CatalogGroup_Rel.csv = 7

Need to trim space before and after = symbol.

This is my script:

#!/usr/bin/ksh

run_count=1
catalog_name=rrc
cd /Dataload_Scripts/Files/$catalog_name
 
 # Getting row count from property file
 FILE_NAME=$run_count"_"$catalog_name"_Record_Count.prop"
#pwd
for file in $run_count"_"*.csv; do
 
 PROP_KEY=$file
 echo "PROP_KEY "$PROP_KEY
 RowCount_from_prop=`cat ${FILE_NAME} | grep "${PROP_KEY}" | cut -d'=' -f2`
 echo "RowCount_from_prop= "$RowCount_from_prop
 
 # Get row count from csv file
 RowCount_from_csv=$(awk 'END { print NR-1 }' $file )
 echo "RowCount_from_csv= "$RowCount_from_csv

if [ "$RowCount_from_csv" == "$RowCount_from_prop" ]
then
 echo "Column header count row proper"
else
 echo "Error send a mail as count is not correct in " $file
  ret_flag=1
fi
done
if [ $ret_flag -eq 1  ]; then
exit 1
else
exit 0
fi

Due to spaces I'm not able to match the correct RowCount_from_prop and RowCount_from_csv. Its giving me error due to white spaces in input file.
Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks

Can you not use sed?

sed 's/ = /=/g'  oldfile > newfile
# next run your script
./myscript.sh

thanks ..
but i solved it this way

tr -d '" "'

So for working fine....

Regards,