how to replace three spaces with tab

how to replace three spaces with tab

[James Miller]

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

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Re: how to replace three spaces with tab

[Eric Bambach]

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 ;)

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
> 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.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------+
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs

-- 
----------------------------------------
--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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Re: how to replace three spaces with tab

[James Miller]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: TEXT/PLAIN, Size: 4599 bytes --]

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?

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
>> 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.
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------+
>> -
>> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
>> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>> Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
>
> -- 
> ----------------------------------------
> --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
>
> ----------------------------------------
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
-------------------------------------------------------------------+
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.
-------------------------------------------------------------------+

Re: how to replace three spaces with tab

[Eric Bambach]

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
> >> 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.
> >> -------------------------------------------------------------------+
> >> -
> >> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie"
> >> in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> >> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> >> Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
> >
> > --
> > ----------------------------------------
> > --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
> >
> > ----------------------------------------
> > -
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie"
> > in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> > Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------+
> 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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To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
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Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs

Re: how to replace three spaces with tab

[J.]

On Thu, 2 Jun 2005, Eric Bambach wrote:

> 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?

`tr' can squeeze repeats.. For example:
~: tr -s ' ' ' ' < foo.txt  

Will remove multiple blank spaces and leave one.. Another one..

~: tr -cs '[A-Z][a-z]' '[\n*]'

Will remove multiple '\012' newlines

> I think that only does single characters though. Anything 
> command-line related that doesnt use sed escapes me for right now though.

If you want pattern scanning in text processing awk & sed are the way to
go. If your not fluent in sed at the command-line look for a document on
the internet [www.google.com/linux] called:

HANDY ONE-LINERS FOR SED (Unix stream editor) compiled by Eric Pement

The website IBM developer works also holds resources and online course
regarding pattern scanning and text processing on the CLI.

Heiners shelldorado also houses many scripts and one-liners

And of course the LDP [Linux Documentation Project]

In this particular case I personally would prefer `awk'. Awk works with
fields [records]. It is designed for this stuff.. And it has a printf
statement.

~: awk '{print $1, $2} foo.txt

match an expression only on field 3

~: awk '$3 ~ /[Ee]pression/ { print }' foo.txt

As you can see awk works natively with records.. 

Next time maybe add some fields or records from your text file. That way
people can give you clear pointers, suggestions - solutions... 

Text processing and pattern scanning are prob. one of the oldest tasks
in the Unix/Linux world. Building filters on the command-line the ``Unix
philosophy``, do one thing - and do it good.. That's definitly the way..

Greetzz.

J.

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Re: how to replace three spaces with tab

[Franklin Chua]

I don't know if this will work for you

unexpand -all -tabs=3 file1 > file2
or
unexpand -a -t=3 file1 > file2

:-)


Eric Bambach wrote:

>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
>>>>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.
>>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------+
>>>>-
>>>>To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie"
>>>>in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>>>>More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>>>>Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>--
>>>----------------------------------------
>>>--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
>>>
>>>----------------------------------------
>>>-
>>>To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie"
>>>in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>>>More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>>>Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
>>>      
>>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------+
>>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.
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------+
>>    
>>
>
>  
>


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Re: how to replace three spaces with tab

[J.]

On Sat, 4 Jun 2005, Franklin Chua wrote:

> I don't know if this will work for you
> 
> unexpand -all -tabs=3 file1 > file2
> or
> unexpand -a -t=3 file1 > file2
> 
> :-)

Wow, nice one... ! lol.. Thnkx..

J.

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Re: how to replace three spaces with tab

[James Miller]

On Sat, 4 Jun 2005, Franklin Chua wrote:

> I don't know if this will work for you
>
> unexpand -all -tabs=3 file1 > file2
> or
> unexpand -a -t=3 file1 > file2

me@mymachine:~$ unexpand -a -t=3 tmp-test_unexpand > file2
unexpand: tab size contains an invalid character
me@mymachine:~$ unexpand -a -t=3 tmp-test_unexpand >file2
unexpand: tab size contains an invalid character
me@mymachine:~$ unexpand -all -tabs=3 tmp-test_unexpand > file2
unexpand: invalid option -- l
Try `unexpand --help' for more information.
me@mymachine:~$

James
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Re: how to replace three spaces with tab

[zavandi]

James Miller <jamtatREMOVETHIS@mailsnare.net> wrote:
> 
> me@mymachine:~$ unexpand -a -t=3 tmp-test_unexpand > file2
> unexpand: tab size contains an invalid character
> me@mymachine:~$ unexpand -a -t=3 tmp-test_unexpand >file2
> unexpand: tab size contains an invalid character
> me@mymachine:~$ unexpand -all -tabs=3 tmp-test_unexpand > file2
> unexpand: invalid option -- l
> Try `unexpand --help' for more information.
> me@mymachine:~$

unexpand -a -t3 tmp-test_unexpand > file2

...or...

unexpand -a -t 3 tmp-test_unexpand > file2

...or...

unexpand --all --tabs=3 tmp-test_unexpand > file2
 
...or...

unexpand --all --tabs 3 tmp-test_unexpand > file2

It's all standard getopt_long(3) usage.
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