Re: how to replace three spaces with tab

[Eric Bambach <eric@cisu.net>]

On Thursday 02 June 2005 06:35 pm, James Miller wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Jun 2005, Eric Bambach wrote:
> > sed 's/   /\t/' largefile.txt > largefile.edited
> >
> > Notice that s/(Three spaces)/(special Tab character sequence)/
> >
> > This will replace ALL occurances of 3 spaces in your file. Make sure you
> > dont have 3 spaces in any other context or those will be changed too. It
> > will output to a new file in case i didnt get it right ;)
>
> Thanks for that command line tip, Eric. Meantime, I discovered that xedit
> tells you, in it's search-and-replace routine, how to enter a tab
> sequence: you hit ctrl-q and then tab while you're in the field where you
> input the replacement text. This seems to have worked quite well. Why
> xedit, of all editors, should have this feature? Dunno. Are there yet
> other ways of doing this?
>

Well the way I said was one of easiest off the top of my head. I suppose 
search and replace features would have to be on an editor by editor basis.

There are plenty of ways to do everything in linux. Im sure someone could come 
up with a perl one or two liner for that. A search-and-replace in an editor 
like you said. Im sure there are a few more command line tools that would 
work too. tr? I think that only does single characters though. Anything 
command-line related that doesnt use sed escapes me for right now though.


> Thanks, James
>
> > On Thursday 02 June 2005 05:11 pm, James Miller wrote:
> >> Here's another example of what looks like something that should be
> >> fairly straightforward but which I've been struggling with for at least
> >> an hour and cannot find an answer. I ran into this before and was
> >> similarly stumped, so I did it all manually. This time I just want to
> >> get it done and finally find out the secret, my ignorance, or whether
> >> this really is one of those irresolvable riddles of (Linux) life.
> >>
> >> I have a document that consists of about 5,500 entries, each on its own
> >> line. If this matters, it's a block file to block out advertising by
> >> resolving certain domains to the localhost (127.0.0.1). In each line of
> >> the file as I saved it, there are three space characters between the IP
> >> and the domain name (damn that elinks browser for doing that!). For my
> >> router to effectively use the file, each of those 5,500 three-space
> >> sequences need to be changed to a tab sequence--like when you press the
> >> tab key while typing in a document. How can I automate this?
> >>
> >> I know how I'd do it in Word, but I've sworn off that sorry excuse for a
> >> piece of software (those guys in Redmond will be jumping with glee when
> >> they read this one: man with naive open source principles walks off
> >> Linux precipice). None of the Linux equivalents I've tried (Abiword,
> >> OpenOffice, gedit, nano) gives any indication of how a tab character can
> >> be inserted in their search-and-replace feature. There are no formatting
> >> characters to select, as they call them in smarmy M$ speak. The
> >> search-and-replace dialogues all understand hitting the tab key as the
> >> user wanting to move to the next field, not as data entry. There's
> >> probably a simple command line way to do this, but if I were adept
> >> enough at simple command line stuff, I'd have found it already. Can
> >> anyone offer pointers on how to automate replacement of the 5,500
> >> three-space sequences with a tab sequence?
> >>
> >> Thanks, James
> >>
> >> -------------------------------------------------------------------+
> >> If you hit the "reply" button in your email client to respond to my
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> >> -------------------------------------------------------------------+
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> >
> > --
> > ----------------------------------------
> > --EB
> >
> >> All is fine except that I can reliably "oops" it simply by trying to
> >> read from /proc/apm (e.g. cat /proc/apm).
> >> oops output and ksymoops-2.3.4 output is attached.
> >> Is there anything else I can contribute?
> >
> > The latitude and longtitude of the bios writers current position, and
> > a ballistic missile.
> >
> >                 --Alan Cox LKML-December 08,2000
> >
> > ----------------------------------------
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>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------+
> If you hit the "reply" button in your email client to respond to my
> message, be sure to remove the REMOVETHIS portion of my email address
> (inserted as an anti-spam tactic). If you don't, your message won't
> reach me.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------+

-- 
----------------------------------------
--EB

> All is fine except that I can reliably "oops" it simply by trying to read
> from /proc/apm (e.g. cat /proc/apm).
> oops output and ksymoops-2.3.4 output is attached.
> Is there anything else I can contribute?

The latitude and longtitude of the bios writers current position, and
a ballistic missile.

                --Alan Cox LKML-December 08,2000 

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