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5

How to delete just the preceding space in a text file?

rated 0 times [ 5] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 3930 / 3 Years ago, sun, july 25, 2021, 11:39:56

I have a text file that has a space before the line. How do I delete it using tr (or the correct command)?

For example, I have this:

 Text

I would like this:

Text

But, how do I do that for a 200 line text file?

I currently have this pipeline:

cat file.txt | tr -s " " | tr -d ","

The other tr commands are for removing other aspects of the text files.

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imonove

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3 Years ago

answered 3 Years ago breadoules · Accepted Answer

This should do the job:

sed -e 's/^ //' -e 's/,//g' file.txt

The sed command (stream editor) is passed two commands to execute sequentially, both commands substitute something by nothing, i.e. delete a part of the input.

The first one removes spaces immediately following the beginning of a line, noted ^, the second one is removing the commas, and has the very same effect as your tr -d "," command.

Thanks to minerz029 for indirectly reminding me I was missing the 'g' as my first reply was only removing the first comma found in each line.