Re^2: Regular Expressions: Removing 'only' single spaces from a string

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Re^3: Regular Expressions: Removing 'only' single spaces from a string by Not_a_Number (Prior) on Oct 20, 2005 at 18:48 UTC
or you could use `$str =~ s/\b \b//g;` ...only if all the non-space characters are word characters: `my $str = '@@@@ $$$ *** )))'; $str =~ s/\b \b//g; print $str;` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: Regular Expressions: Removing 'only' single spaces from a string by BioBoy (Novice) on Oct 20, 2005 at 18:46 UTC
Thanks GrandFather. That almost worked 100%. I have some strings where the is no clear word boundary. Specifically, something like this: `The boy to [ld his fat, her` [download] In that example, \b is failing to remove the space after to, and before '[', as well as the space after ',', and before her. Would I need to use \B as well?	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: Regular Expressions: Removing 'only' single spaces from a string by Trix606 (Monk) on Oct 20, 2005 at 20:28 UTC
I found that the following works on both sample strings: `$string =~ s/(\S)\s(\S)/$1$2/g;` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^5: Regular Expressions: Removing 'only' single spaces from a string by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Oct 20, 2005 at 23:32 UTC
Won't work for a single space at the beginning or end of the string. To fix: `$string =~ s/(\S\|^)\s(\S\|$)/$1$2/g;` [download] But the lookahead solution is preferable. Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: Regular Expressions: Removing 'only' single spaces from a string by GrandFather (Saint) on Oct 20, 2005 at 19:32 UTC
See Not_a_Number's reply here. Use the look behind/look ahead approach I suggested here instead. Perl is Huffman encoded by design.	[reply]