Removing Spaces

Removing Spaces

I recently needed to remove a bunch of spaces and needed to compress some data down and found that tr -s was exactly what I needed.

 more taxref
 6212301245700000123456    00000588005617512580            JOHN SMITH           0042158657802577
 6212301245700000123456    00000588005617512580            JOHN SMITH           0042198757802577
 6212301245700000123456    00000600005617512580            SHARON JONES         0042198757802577
 6212301245700000123456    00000588005617512580            JOHN SMITH                     0042158657802577
 6212301245700000123456    00000588005617512580            JOHN SMITH                     0042198757802577
 6212301245700000123456    00000600005617512580            SHARON JONES              0042198757802577
 tr -s " " >newtax
 more newtax
 6212301245700000123456 00000588005617512580 JOHN SMITH 0042158657802577
 6212301245700000123456 00000588005617512580 JOHN SMITH 0042198757802577
 6212301245700000123456 00000600005617512580 SHARON JONES 0042198757802577
 6212301245700000123456 00000588005617512580 JOHN SMITH 0042158657802577
 6212301245700000123456 00000588005617512580 JOHN SMITH 0042198757802577
 6212301245700000123456 00000600005617512580 SHARON JONES 0042198757802577					

Although this may not be exactly what you need it certainly helped me compress down some data and get ride of a lot of extraneous spaces.