Re: something unclear with sed for me

[Phil Dyer <phil.dyer@cox.net>]

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Andras Lorincz wrote:
> I want to replaces all multiple spaces with one space. My first
> attempt was this:
> 
> sed -e 's/\ */\ /g'
> 
> This replaced all multiple spaces with one but as a side effect, sed
> inserted a space between all characters. 

You told sed "replace 0 or more whitespace characters with 1 whitespace
character.

> 
> sed -e 's/[\ ]\ */\ /g'
> 
> and this works. The fact is that I don't understand why the first one
> doesn't work. Can someone explain me that?

This time you told sed  "replace 1 or more whitespace characters with 1
whitespace character.


- --

/phil


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