Bash - How to remove all white spaces from a given text file?

Question

I want to remove all the white spaces from a given text file.

Is there any shell command available for this ?

Or, how to use sed for this purpose?

I want something like below:

$ cat hello.txt | sed ....

I tried this : cat hello.txt | sed 's/ //g' .

But it removes only spaces, not tabs.

Thanks.

by "all whitespace", do you mean newlines as well? – glenn jackman Jun 19 '13 at 23:54 — glenn jackman, Jun 19 '13 at 23:54

Paulo Scardine · Accepted Answer · 2017-10-25T15:20:23.740

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$ man tr
NAME
    tr - translate or delete characters

SYNOPSIS
    tr [OPTION]... SET1 [SET2]

DESCRIPTION
   Translate, squeeze, and/or delete characters from standard 
   input, writing to standard output.

In order to wipe all whitespace including newlines you can try:

cat file.txt | tr -d " \t\n\r"

You can also use the character classes defined by tr (credits to htompkins comment):

cat file.txt | tr -d "[:space:]"

For example, in order to wipe just horizontal white space:

cat file.txt | tr -d "[:blank:]"

edited Oct 25 '17 at 15:20

answered Mar 31 '12 at 06:11

Paulo Scardine

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You can also use the character classes defined by `tr`. Examples: To delete _all_ whitespace: `cat file.txt | tr -d "[:space:]"` To delete all horizontal whitespace: `cat file.txt | tr -d "[:blank:]"` – htompkins Jul 24 '14 at 22:54
@user3901666 it will remove whitespace, yes, if the output produced will match what you want is hard to say - what have you tried? – Paulo Scardine Oct 14 '19 at 06:51

score 31 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 19 '13 at 19:29

31

Much simpler to my opinion:

sed -r 's/\s+//g' filename

edited Jun 19 '13 at 19:29

Thomas Fenzl

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answered Jun 19 '13 at 19:11

Lucie G

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I've just tried this and it outputs the amended text to STDOUT but doesn't change the file itself. – Max Williams Dec 09 '13 at 11:23
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@MaxWilliams - just use the -i (dash i) flag with sed – JeffCharter Sep 13 '14 at 21:19
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This does not remove newlines, not sure if that was wanted by OP. – Graeme Moss Aug 10 '16 at 06:49
This also removes every instance of the letter S on macOS bash! :) – BSUK Sep 09 '22 at 13:23

score 18 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 29 '22 at 14:50

18

I think you may use sed to wipe out the space while not losing some infomation like changing to another line.

cat hello.txt | sed '/^$/d;s/[[:blank:]]//g'

To apply into existing file, use following:

sed -i '/^$/d;s/[[:blank:]]//g' hello.txt

edited Aug 29 '22 at 14:50

Jerry Chong

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answered Mar 31 '12 at 09:20

Umae

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Fine, but I don't think I'll be able to bring myself to write `tr -d " " < infile.txt > outfile.txt` – NReilingh Oct 03 '14 at 19:30
Hello, this works thanks, but I would appreciate some explaination. – David Okwii May 13 '16 at 06:07

keyser · Answer 4 · 2016-06-04T11:32:44.817

11

Try this:

sed -e 's/[\t ]//g;/^$/d'

(found here)

The first part removes all tabs (\t) and spaces, and the second part removes all empty lines

edited Jun 04 '16 at 11:32

answered Mar 31 '12 at 06:13

keyser

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This actually works. Care to explain sed -e 's/[\t ]//g;/^$/d' particularly /^$/d'. I know ^ is for start of string, $ is for end. /d is for delete when using sed. But how does this interpretation lead of deletion of white spaces? – David Okwii May 13 '16 at 06:51
I added an explanation. `^$` matches an empty line since it's looking for "start of line" (^) and then immediately after, "end of line" ($). – keyser Jun 04 '16 at 11:33
Removes all instances of letter S on macOS bash. – BSUK Sep 09 '22 at 13:26

score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 19 '13 at 23:57

5

If you want to remove ALL whitespace, even newlines:

perl -pe 's/\s+//g' file

answered Jun 19 '13 at 23:57

glenn jackman

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score 5 · Answer 6 · edited Dec 12 '17 at 05:06

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This answer is similar to other however as some people have been complaining that the output goes to STDOUT i am just going to suggest redirecting it to the original file and overwriting it. I would never normally suggest this but sometimes quick and dirty works.

cat file.txt | tr -d " \t\n\r" > file.txt

edited Dec 12 '17 at 05:06

Ken Y-N

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answered Mar 27 '17 at 12:45

Omar Essilfie-Quaye

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score 4 · Answer 7 · edited Jan 05 '22 at 20:19

4

Easiest way for me:

echo "Hello my name is Donald" | sed  s/\ //g

edited Jan 05 '22 at 20:19

Asclepius

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answered Feb 12 '16 at 13:57

DDD

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score 2 · Answer 8 · answered May 15 '14 at 00:30

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This is probably the simplest way of doing it:

sed -r 's/\s+//g' filename > output
mv ouput filename

answered May 15 '14 at 00:30

Gorton Fishman

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score 2 · Answer 9 · answered May 31 '16 at 05:30

2

Dude, Just python test.py in your terminal.

f = open('/home/hduser/Desktop/data.csv' , 'r')

x = f.read().split()
f.close()

y = ' '.join(x)
f = open('/home/hduser/Desktop/data.csv','w')
f.write(y)
f.close()

answered May 31 '16 at 05:30

Agnibesh Chauhan

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Sorry to bump an old thread, but isn't `f.read().strip("\t\n\r ")` more efficient? – Jachdich May 08 '19 at 11:33
What if there are two or more subsequent spaces,tabs etc. b/w words? I think your solution is for leading and trailing white-spaces. If you want one liner, you can easily convert the above code. – Agnibesh Chauhan Sep 05 '19 at 07:09

score 1 · Answer 10 · edited May 19 '14 at 19:44

1

Try this:

tr -d " \t" <filename

See the manpage for tr(1) for more details.

edited May 19 '14 at 19:44

fuz

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answered May 19 '14 at 19:18

user3653982

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score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Mar 31 '12 at 06:11

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hmm...seems like something on the order of sed -e "s/[ \t\n\r\v]//g" < hello.txt should be in the right ballpark (seems to work under cygwin in any case).

answered Mar 31 '12 at 06:11

Jerry Coffin

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Bash - How to remove all white spaces from a given text file?

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