CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashshellgrep
NicolasG
NicolasG

Reputation: 31

how to remove blank space of text files?

I want to remove all empty lines from some text file. I can do it with:

grep '[^[:blank:]]' < file1.dat > file1.dat.nospace

But I need to do it with n-files in a directory. How can I do it?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 155

Answers (3)

webb
webb

Reputation: 4340

here is a way:

for filename in *.dat; do
  grep '[^[:blank:]]' < $filename > $filename.nospace
done

here is a more robust way, one that works in a larger variety of circumstances:

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "*.dat" | while read filename; do
  grep '[^[:blank:]]' < "$filename" > "$filename.nospace"
done

here a much faster way (in execution time, but also in typing). this is the way i would actually do it:

find *.dat -printf "grep '[^[:blank:]]' < \"%f\" > \"%f.nospace\"\n" | sh

here is a more robust version of that:

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "*.dat" -printf "grep '[^[:blank:]]' < \"%f\" > \"%f.nospace\"\n" | sh

ps: here's the actual correct grep for nonblank lines:

grep -v '^$' < $filename > $filename.nospace

Upvotes: 1

Labynocle
Labynocle

Reputation: 4612

this oneliner could probably help you:

for a in /path/to/file_pattern*; do sed "/^\s*$/d" $a > $a.nospace;done

Upvotes: 1

anubhava
anubhava

Reputation: 785196

You can use it with find

find . -name '*.dat' -exec sed -i.bak '/^[[:blank:]]*$/d' {} +

Upvotes: 3

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