How do I replace whitespaces with tabs in linux in a given text file?
This question is related to
linux
tabs
whitespace
Using sed:
T=$(printf "\t")
sed "s/[[:blank:]]\+/$T/g"
or
sed "s/[[:space:]]\+/$T/g"
This will replace consecutive spaces with one space (but not tab).
tr -s '[:blank:]'
This will replace consecutive spaces with a tab.
tr -s '[:blank:]' '\t'
If you are talking about replacing all consecutive spaces on a line with a tab then tr -s '[:blank:]' '\t'
.
[root@sysresccd /run/archiso/img_dev]# sfdisk -l -q -o Device,Start /dev/sda
Device Start
/dev/sda1 2048
/dev/sda2 411648
/dev/sda3 2508800
/dev/sda4 10639360
/dev/sda5 75307008
/dev/sda6 96278528
/dev/sda7 115809778
[root@sysresccd /run/archiso/img_dev]# sfdisk -l -q -o Device,Start /dev/sda | tr -s '[:blank:]' '\t'
Device Start
/dev/sda1 2048
/dev/sda2 411648
/dev/sda3 2508800
/dev/sda4 10639360
/dev/sda5 75307008
/dev/sda6 96278528
/dev/sda7 115809778
If you are talking about replacing all whitespace (e.g. space, tab, newline, etc.) then tr -s '[:space:]'
.
[root@sysresccd /run/archiso/img_dev]# sfdisk -l -q -o Device,Start /dev/sda | tr -s '[:space:]' '\t'
Device Start /dev/sda1 2048 /dev/sda2 411648 /dev/sda3 2508800 /dev/sda4 10639360 /dev/sda5 75307008 /dev/sda6 96278528 /dev/sda7 115809778
If you are talking about fixing a tab-damaged file then use expand
and unexpand
as mentioned in other answers.
better tr command:
tr [:blank:] \\t
This will clean up the output of say, unzip -l , for further processing with grep, cut, etc.
e.g.,
unzip -l some-jars-and-textfiles.zip | tr [:blank:] \\t | cut -f 5 | grep jar
You can also use astyle
. I found it quite useful and it has several options too:
Tab and Bracket Options:
If no indentation option is set, the default option of 4 spaces will be used. Equivalent to -s4 --indent=spaces=4. If no brackets option is set, the
brackets will not be changed.
--indent=spaces, --indent=spaces=#, -s, -s#
Indent using # spaces per indent. Between 1 to 20. Not specifying # will result in a default of 4 spaces per indent.
--indent=tab, --indent=tab=#, -t, -t#
Indent using tab characters, assuming that each tab is # spaces long. Between 1 and 20. Not specifying # will result in a default assumption of
4 spaces per tab.`
Download and run the following script to recursively convert soft tabs to hard tabs in plain text files.
Place and execute the script from inside the folder which contains the plain text files.
#!/bin/bash
find . -type f -and -not -path './.git/*' -exec grep -Iq . {} \; -and -print | while read -r file; do {
echo "Converting... "$file"";
data=$(unexpand --first-only -t 4 "$file");
rm "$file";
echo "$data" > "$file";
}; done;
Example command for converting each .js file under the current dir to tabs (only leading spaces are converted):
find . -name "*.js" -exec bash -c 'unexpand -t 4 --first-only "$0" > /tmp/totabbuff && mv /tmp/totabbuff "$0"' {} \;
Using Perl:
perl -p -i -e 's/ /\t/g' file.txt
I think you can try with awk
awk -v OFS="\t" '$1=$1' file1
or SED if you preffer
sed 's/[:blank:]+/,/g' thefile.txt > the_modified_copy.txt
or even tr
tr -s '\t' < thefile.txt | tr '\t' ' ' > the_modified_copy.txt
or a simplified version of the tr solution sugested by Sam Bisbee
tr ' ' \\t < someFile > someFile
UNEXPAND(1) User Commands UNEXPAND(1)
NAME
unexpand - convert spaces to tabs
SYNOPSIS
unexpand [OPTION]... [FILE]...
DESCRIPTION
Convert blanks in each FILE to tabs, writing to standard output. With
no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.
Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options
too.
-a, --all
convert all blanks, instead of just initial blanks
--first-only
convert only leading sequences of blanks (overrides -a)
-t, --tabs=N
have tabs N characters apart instead of 8 (enables -a)
-t, --tabs=LIST
use comma separated LIST of tab positions (enables -a)
--help display this help and exit
--version
output version information and exit
. . .
STANDARDS
The expand and unexpand utilities conform to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001
(``POSIX.1'').
Source: Stackoverflow.com