remove spaces

[Asif Ahmed Syed]

a small question - how can we remove spaces within a file without making use another file?

[Sangal-Arun]

[dir@host] $ cat av
giga g hhh
hira moti giga gi gaa giga fi fa

[dir@host] $ sed "s/[ \t][ \t]*//g" av|tee av
gigaghhh
hiramotigigagigaagigafifa

[dir@host] $ cat av
gigaghhh
hiramotigigagigaagigafifa

[dir@host] $

[Sangal-Arun]

To just remove multiple spaces...not single space... just replace/substitute [ \t][ \t] with a single space ..i.e.

sed "s/[ \t][ \t]*/ /g" av|tee av

a space added...^ (within / and /)

[scm]

If you really want to remove all space characters from a file in situ

sed -i "s/ *//g" filename

will do it.

[Asif Ahmed Syed]

the tee is printing out the file at the output. Do I need to put >/dev/null or am i doing wrong

sed "s/[ \t][ \t]*//g" av|tee av

-i option is not available to me

sed -i "s/ *//g" filename

[ghostdog74]

sometimes you just have to be practical.

sed "s/[ \t][ \t]*//g" av > temp
mv temp original_file_name

what's wrong with that?
sed with the -i option will do the same thing at the background for you.

[Asif Ahmed Syed]

sometimes you just have to be practical.

Code:
sed "s/[ \t][ \t]*//g" av > temp
mv temp original_file_name

Didnt wanted to use an additional file

what's wrong with that?
sed with the -i option will do the same thing at the background for you

-i option for sed is not supported . May be old version and needs to be upgraded

[ghostdog74]

if you do not have -i option, then no go for your version of sed. Even if you have the latest sed with -i option, it is also going to create an "invisible" temp file for you. so what's the big problem ? just use whatever you have to get the job done.

[Kieren]

You could use tr:

echo $(cat temp | tr -d "\ ") > temp

Where temp is the name of the file

[ghostdog74]

You could use tr:

echo $() > temp

Where temp is the name of the file

you don't need extra echo and cat(UUOC) and the escape

tr -d " "< temp > outfile

also, usually, people don't cat a file and redirect to the same file.