From owner-freebsd-questions  Sun Mar 31 14:30: 8 2002
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Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2002 15:30:03 -0700 (MST)
From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
To: Eric Boucher <eric_boucher60@yahoo.com>
Cc: FreeBSD <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject: Re: exact length of a line in a file with the read command
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On Sun, 31 Mar 2002, Eric Boucher wrote:

> I want to know the exact length of each line in a
> file. But it seems that when the file begin or end
> with a space caracter of a tab caracter, the "read"
> command in bourne shell delete them and return me only
> what begin with a letter and end with a letter. So
> when I try to know the exact length of a file (I tried
> with both lenght command from "expr" and "nawk"). So
> if for example, a line is like this (note: <space>
> mean the real space caracter and <tab> the tab
> caracter)
> <space>toto<tab>
> the read return me only:
> toto
> which is of length = 4
> but it is suppose to be of length = 6
  
This just worked for me:

#!/bin/sh
IFS=""
echo "Enter a string"
read tester
echo $tester
echo ${#tester}

If a shell script is going to be non-trivial, I just use Perl.

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA



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