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How to remove extra spaces in bash?

How to remove extra spaces in variable HEAD?

HEAD="    how to  remove    extra        spaces                     " 

Result:

how to remove extra spaces 
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Charlie Avatar asked Oct 26 '12 18:10

Charlie


2 Answers

Try this:

echo "$HEAD" | tr -s " " 

or maybe you want to save it in a variable:

NEWHEAD=$(echo "$HEAD" | tr -s " ") 

Update

To remove leading and trailing whitespaces, do this:

NEWHEAD=$(echo "$HEAD" | tr -s " ") NEWHEAD=${NEWHEAD%% } NEWHEAD=${NEWHEAD## } 
like image 183
jman Avatar answered Oct 11 '22 15:10

jman


Using awk:

$ echo "$HEAD" | awk '$1=$1' how to remove extra spaces 
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Guru Avatar answered Oct 11 '22 14:10

Guru