Re: Re: whitespaces replace with tabs - help needed...

[star7]

That*s the way i like it :)

i wrote following code:

LINE: while(<FILE>) {
    chomp($_);
    $_=~ s/ +/\t/s;
    print OUTPUT "$_\n";
    # $_ =~ s/^(d{6})\t(d{2}):(d{2})/$1 $2:$3/g;
    };
close(FILE);
close(OUTPUT);

(maybe i have to use the option e)
What i want:
1. replace one or more spaces with a tab
2. see #comment: in the line (-> $_ ) replace first tab with a space

Maybe you are more sage as i.
can you help me to adjust this code.
Thanks.
star7

[ramjr]

I'm a new user of this site and first time poster. Forgive me if I error ;-)

You said:

1. replace one or more spaces with a tab

2. see #comment: in the line (-> $_ ) replace first tab with a space

But 1 says the reverse of what 2 says, if I'm reading it correctly.

So, trying to answer 1: s/\s+/\t/does what you want, once, on the first group of white space characters found.

And, again, trying to answer 2: s/\t/ /will do the trick, for the first tab found in the input, converting it to a space.

If you want these to work on all groups of whitespace or on all tabs found on input, add the 'g' modifier, as in your commented example:

s/\s+/\t/g
s/\t/ /g

Following are some comments regarding whitespace, for those interested, and on the code snippet provided by star7.

Read more... (2 kB)

[hagen]

Hi,

you may want to take a look at tr// (`translate'), especially the `s' modifier. This will replace multiple duplicated characters with one instance of the required character.

For example, in your line

$_=~s/ +/\t/s;,

(the $_ isn't really necessary here) you could have

tr/ /\t/s;. I understand it's quite a bit more efficient.