Shell Script: How to trim spaces from a bash variable [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How to trim whitespace from bash variable?

I have searched and attempted a number of solutions but nothing seems to work for me...

I have a shell variable which is causing issues due to leading and trailing spaces. how can we get rid of all the spaces in a single line using shell script?

Gene Pauly · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-13 10:34:38Z

21

I can think of two options:

variable="  gfgergj lkjgrg  "
echo $variable | sed 's,^ *,,; s, *$,,'

or else

nospaces=${variable## } # remove leading spaces
nospaces=${variable%% } # remove trailing spaces

edited Jul 13, 2017 at 10:34

Gene Pauly

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answered Aug 3, 2012 at 7:50

jpmuc

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4 Comments

tzelleke Over a year ago

nospaces=${variable// } actually removes leading and trailing spaces in my Bash

blue01 Over a year ago

nospaces=${variable// } removes all spaces

gammay Over a year ago

nospaces=${variable// } removes all spaces

Gene Pauly Over a year ago

The second option removes at most one space. This method is rather long, only applies to bash, but is quite efficient and can also take care of tabs, newlines etc.

Kent · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-03 13:26:48Z

1

there are so many ways to achieve that, awk oneliner:

kent$  echo "    foo  -  -  -  bar   "|awk '{sub(/^ */,"",$0);sub(/ *$/,"",$0)}1'
foo  -  -  -  bar

edited Aug 3, 2012 at 13:26

answered Aug 3, 2012 at 7:54

Kent

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