Date: Fri, 12 May 2006 20:04:06 +0300 From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> To: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com> Cc: Martin McCormick <martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Trimming Whitespace From Beginning and end of Text Lines Message-ID: <20060512170406.GE26040@gothmog.pc> In-Reply-To: <20060512102134.J14220@wonkity.com> References: <200605121450.k4CEokhn022089@dc.cis.okstate.edu> <20060512150608.GB25497@gothmog.pc> <20060512102134.J14220@wonkity.com>
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On 2006-05-12 10:41, Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com> wrote: >On Fri, 12 May 2006, Giorgos Keramidas wrote: >> There are at least the following ways: >> >> sed -i -e 's/^[[:space:]]*' -e 's/[[:space:]]*$//' file ... >> perl -pi -e 's/^\s*(\S.*\S)[ \t]*$/$1/' file ... >> >> The first one seems more straightforward to me most of the >> time, but there are times I find Perl's `-pi -e ...' idiom >> very convenient. > > Neither of those work here: > > The first sed expression is missing "//". Correcting that: > sed -i -e 's/^[[:space:]]*//' -e 's/[[:space:]]*$//' test.txt > sed: lstat: No such file or directory Yeah, I noticed the missing // in the first regexp, but only after I had posted the message. You're right, of course :) It seems odd that the fixed expression doesn't work though. Which version of FreeBSD is this and what sed are you running? $ uname -v $ type sed > The Perl version shows no difference between the original and > processed file. It's complex, too. This one works: > > perl -pi -le 's/^\s+//; s/\s+$//' test.txt > > Notes: > 1. sed always seems to be a pain. My compliments to those who use it > regularly; the only time I use it at all is when Perl (or something > else with better handling of regular expressions) is not available. > 2. The -l option to perl is needed to preserve line endings. > 3. The last version is based on the more efficient way of doing it as > per: man -P 'less +/trim' perlop Great! Thanks for all the useful tips :)
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