Hi,
DervishD wrote [2003/10/01]:
> Hi all :))
>
> I need to strip leading and trailing spaces from the contents of
> a shell variable, and I need to do it portably, with a construct like
> ${...%% } and with no loops. When I say 'portably' I mean using SuSv3
> constructs, not Zsh extensions.
>
> I've tried the obvious ${variable# } for stripping a single
> space, but this needs a while loop, which I want to avoid (although
> it seems to be portable):
>
> while [ "$variable" != "${variable# }" ]
> do
> variable="${variable# }"
> done
>
> And the same with the '%' construct. Please note that I cannot
> use '[[' for the test, since it must be portable, and this involves
> exec'ing the 'test' binary for each space in the variable :((
>
> If no solution is possible I'll use 'tr', because the shell code
> must run in bash and zsh at least, but I really want it to be able to
> run in any SuSv3 compliant shell.
Why not
variable=`echo "$variable" | sed -e 's/^ *//' -e 's/ *$//'`
?
I'm not sure whether all versions of sed understand multiple
"-e" arguments, so it might me necessary to use this:
variable=`echo "$variable" | sed -e 's/^ *//' | sed -e 's/ *$//'`
> Thanks a lot for your help :)
>
> Raúl Núñez de Arenas Coronado
Ciao,
Thomas
--
Thomas Köhler Email: jean-luc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | LCARS - Linux
<>< WWW: http://jeanluc-picard.de | for Computers
IRC: jeanluc | on All Real
PGP public key available from Homepage! | Starships
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature