How can we remove the leading and traling spaces from a string in batch script?

Question

I have a first.properties file and I am reading that file, skipping the first 5 lines and creating a new file with the remaining lines of first.properties. This is working fine. But I am getting spaces for each line in the newly created file. I want to remove these spaces.

I have used the following piece of code:

@echo off
set new=0
setlocal ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
for /F "skip=5" %%L in (first.properties) do (
echo %%L>>NewProjectsInfo.properties 
)
endlocal
pause

first.properties is as follows:

name=abcd
number=bcde
address=cdef
mobile=efgh
worklocation=ghij

Please help me out to remove the spaces.

Do I understand correctly that the entries in `first.properties` (after line 6) have leading and/or trailing spaces? Because the lines you posted (only 5) have not. I'd be surprised if the code you have got mysteriously creates any spaces. — zb226, May 15 '13 at 12:23
This is somewhat backwards compared to your question in that it adds characters, but may help: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10021464/batch-file-to-add-characters-to-beginning-and-end-of-each-line-in-txt-file — Dave, May 15 '13 at 12:28

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered May 15 '13 at 13:07

Try this. There can be issues when numbers directly precede the >> characters. You are not using ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION so I removed it too.

@echo off
set new=0
setlocal
for /F "skip=5 delims=" %%L in (first.properties) do (
>>NewProjectsInfo.properties echo %%L
)
endlocal
pause

anishsane · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-15T14:07:34.547

1

There is a space after NewProjectsInfo.properties in your code. if that is removed, it works as you expect.

It's sad, but looks like, batch interprets command as entire line & separates out the redirection part. In bash, for example, the command terminates at > symbol itself.

e.g. echo hello >somefile.txt world will put hello world in somefile.txt.

edited May 15 '13 at 14:07

answered May 15 '13 at 14:00

anishsane

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 15 '13 at 13:51

@ECHO OFF
SETLOCAL
(
FOR /f "skip=5 delims=" %%i IN (rltsf.txt) DO CALL :unpad %%i
)>output.txt

FC rltsf.txt output.txt
GOTO :eof

:unpad
ECHO %*
GOTO :eof

This approach seemst to work, but I fancy it may be a little sensitive to line-content. Easier to test if we have representative data...

How can we remove the leading and traling spaces from a string in batch script?

3 Answers3