Hi,

I have a text file containing some numeric fields which are delimited by one or more spaces. Some of the numeric fields contain leading zeroes in it. I need to replace the leading zeroes with spaces in order to maintain the record layout.

An example file layout is given below.

Number Name Pay Tax Total
1 John 01000 005 01005
2 Pipal 00500 005 00505

Can some one help me? Is it possible to acheive this with awk or sed or tr easily?

Thanks,
Balaji.

awk '{
$3=$3+0
$4=$4+0
$5=$5+0}
1' file

Ghostdog:

What is the significance of the '1' at the end of the awk script? Is this short hand for 'print $0'?

yes it is.

Hi,

Thanks for your response. I just noticed that values are not preceded with leading zeroes, but also with +. The contents of the file is as below.

Number Name Pay Tax Total
1 John +01000 +005 +01005
2 Pipal +00500 +005 +00505

How can I retain the + symbol, but remove the leading zeroes?

Thanks,
Balaji.

First, skip the header record; then, foreach numeric field, place the plus sign back:

# stub script only contains field 3
awk '{
if(NR == 1)
   {
   print $0
   continue
   }
$3=$3+0;
$3="+"$3