Hi Lucy,

You can remove all multiple occurences of a character in a text file
(including control characters) by using the 'tr' command.
Try:-
 tr -s ' '  < textfile > newfile         #would remove multiple occuring
spaces

Then to assign variables to each word in a line, try using the 'cut' command

cat newfile |while read text_line
        do
        first_word=(echo $text_line |cut -d" " -f 1)
        second_word=(echo $text_line |cut -d" " -f 2)
        ....
        ......
        ....
        done

Have a look at the man pages for 'tr' and 'cut' for more info.

Have fun,

Phil Gregory

Data Network Services
Midlands Electricity
Kingswinford.

phil.gregory AT meb.co DOT uk   Tel.01384.296.191 [x3511]  fax.01384.405155


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lucy Premus [SMTP:lpremus AT METLIFE DOT COM]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 19, 1999 3:30 PM
> To:   NV-L AT UCSBVM.ucsb DOT edu
> Subject:      assigning variables in a script
>
> Okay.  I have another question regarding variables and scripts.  But
> before
> I ask this one, just wondering if anyone knows the answer to my previous
> question?.  How do you remove preceding spaces in a variable?  Meaning if
> I
> have a variable that looks like this
> '                           TRUE', but all I really need is just the word
> TRUE.  How do I get rid of the spaces before the word?
>
> My other question is if my script is reading a text file and processing
> each line, how do I parse out each word on that line and assign it to a
> variable?  For example, the line looks like this:   'resourcename Jan 15
> 10:00:00 EST 1999' and I just want to capture 'resourcename' and assign it
> to one variable and capture  '10:00:00' and assign it to another variable.
>
> BTW....In case anyone is wondering, I do have a Korn Shell programming
> book, but I can't seem to find this information in there.  I'm sure its
> there, in some form, but is it english?   Thanks for all the
> help..................Lucy
>
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