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Re: Remove extra spaces from a string
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Re: Remove extra spaces from a string


  • Subject: Re: Remove extra spaces from a string
  • From: Christopher Nebel <email@hidden>
  • Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 14:58:21 -0700

On Monday, June 9, 2003, at 02:09 PM, Emmanuel wrote:

set withspaces to "Extra spaces."
display dialog "Before: " & withspaces
set withoutspaces to do shell script ("echo " & withspaces & " | tr -s ' '")
display dialog "After: " & withoutspaces

Since we mention "tr" we have to mention also that it works only on strings up to 64KB.

Actually, tr(1) can handle any amount of data. The shell, however, can only pass about 64KB worth of arguments around, hence the limit.

Amusingly, this example is written in such a way that the "tr" is unnecessary. Because the OP didn't quote the "argument" to echo(1), the shell sees each whitespace-delimited thing as a different argument, and echo puts exactly one space between each of its arguments. Of course, this script would also fail if "withspaces" contained any quotes. A more correct version would be this:

set withspaces to "Extra spaces."
display dialog "Before: " & withspaces
set withoutspaces to do shell script ("echo " & quoted form of withspaces & " | tr -s ' '")
display dialog "After: " & withoutspaces


--Chris Nebel
Apple Development Tools
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  • Follow-Ups:
    • Re: [AS Users]Re: Remove extra spaces from a string
      • From: Mátyás Ferenc Farkas <email@hidden>
References: 
 >Re: Remove extra spaces from a string (From: Emmanuel <email@hidden>)

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