CODEWITHSUNDEEP
stringbash
Charlie
Charlie

Reputation: 2291

Bash/Shell How to remove extra spaces in a variable?

How to remove extra spaces in a variable?

VAR="    Eget ac vel volutpat      dic  tumst   est dui      adipiscing  "

Correct result: VAR="Eget ac vel volutpat dic tumst est dui adipiscing"

There are over 16,000,000 to be edited; sed is too slow!

!!! E D I T !!!

String OK! Thank you all

BUT

Text in array problem, gaps remain :-(

ITM=("  Eget ac  vel volutpat   |  Vel volutpat     dic tumst "
     "    Vestibulum  laoreet     a semper  |orttitor      eu laoreet justo congue ")

IFS=$'|'

for (( i=0 ; i<16000000 ; i++ ))
do
    AAA=( ITM[$i] )
    B=${AAA[0]}     # "  Eget ac  vel volutpat   "
    C=${AAA[1]}     # "  Vel volutpat     dic tumst "

done

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1399

Answers (3)

Gilles Qu&#233;not
Gilles Qu&#233;not

Reputation: 185841

Just remove the quotes, ex :

$ VAR="    Eget ac vel volutpat      dic  tumst   est dui      adipiscing  "     
$ echo $VAR
Eget ac vel volutpat dic tumst est dui adipiscing
$ echo "$VAR"
    Eget ac vel volutpat      dic  tumst   est dui      adipiscing  
$

If you prefer :

$ VAR="    Eget ac vel volutpat      dic  tumst   est dui      adipiscing  "
$ VAR="$(echo $VAR)"
$ echo "$VAR"
Eget ac vel volutpat dic tumst est dui adipiscing

This behaviour is called word splitting.

NOTE

as mentioned in the comments, you should use this only if you know that your variables contains no special characters like *.

Upvotes: 0

ghoti
ghoti

Reputation: 46896

You don't need to spawn subshells for this. Just use bash's built-in pattern substitution.

[ghoti@pc ~]$ shopt -s extglob
[ghoti@pc ~]$ VAR="    Eget ac vel volutpat      dic  tumst   est dui      adipiscing  "
[ghoti@pc ~]$ VAR=${VAR//+( )/ }
[ghoti@pc ~]$ echo "$VAR"
 Eget ac vel volutpat dic tumst est dui adipiscing 
[ghoti@pc ~]$ VAR=${VAR#+( )}
[ghoti@pc ~]$ echo "$VAR"
Eget ac vel volutpat dic tumst est dui adipiscing
[ghoti@pc ~]$

Upvotes: 2

Dan Bliss
Dan Bliss

Reputation: 1744

Shell is not really set up to do massive data processing, even processing as simple as collapsing spaces. But here is a solution without using sed

VAR="    Eget ac vel volutpat      dic  tumst   est dui      adipiscing  "
VAR=$(echo $VAR)

This code will set VAR to the collapsed version of the original var. You can see this by executing:

echo "$VAR"

result:

Eget ac vel volutpat dic tumst est dui adipiscing

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions