uniq -c without additional spaces

Question

Is there an option in uniq -c (or an alternative) that doesn't add additional whitespaces around the count number? Currently I generally pipe it through sed, like so:

sort | uniq -c | sed 's/^ *\([0-9]*\) /\1 /'

But this seems kinda redundant, particularly given how frequently I have to do this.

Provide sample output that bothers you (raw and converted) or a sample input file. — Mad Physicist, Mar 02 '16 at 12:14
Also, this really depends on your final usage. There may be a better way of doing it depending on what you really need (XY problem). — Mad Physicist, Mar 02 '16 at 12:17
Short answer is no. The whitespace is there because the numerical fields are right-justified, so a field-width large enough to hold a reasonably large count was selected. — Mad Physicist, Mar 02 '16 at 12:17
Make a small script or function called `johniq` calling `uniq -c | sed 's/^ *$[0-9]*$ */\1 /'`. — Walter A, Mar 02 '16 at 23:12

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 04 '16 at 19:28

You can try to make the sed command as short as possible with

sort | uniq -c | sed 's/^ *//'

If you have GNU grep, you can also use the -P flag:

sort | uniq -c | grep -Po '\d.*'

(Do not use awk '{$1=$1};1', it will trim more than you want)

When you need this often, you can make a function or script calling

sort | uniq -c | sed 's/^ *//'

or only

uniq -c | sed 's/^ *//'

uniq -c without additional spaces

1 Answers1