[nycbug-talk] Re: Simple sed question

[Francisco Reyes]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, a nice bug wrote:

> Francisco:
>> New to sed/awk.. reading a book on them.
>> Trying to convert:
>> ### Text Text Text
>>
>> to
>> ###<tab>Text Text Text
>
>
> echo -e "Text Text Text" |sed -e 's/\(Text Text Text\)/\t\1/g'
>
> Just a general example for the tab replacement part (it could have
> many further permutations depending precisely what you need..)


Of course it would help if I had explained that "Text Text Text" are 3 
unknown columns and not literals. :-(
Real data sample
506     AllianceBer Intl PremGr B     AIPBX   8.29    -2.13   -1.54
507     AllianceBer Intl PremGr C     AIPCX   8.29    -2.24   -1.54
508     AllianceBer Intl PremGrAd     AIPYX   8.87    -1.88   -0.67
509     AllianceBer Intl Val A        ABIAX   14.91   5.59    9.79
510  AllianceBer Intl Val A    ABIAX   14.91   5.59    9.79
511 AllianceBer Intl Val A    ABIAX   14.91   5.59    9.79
512 AllianceBer Intl Val A    ABIAX   14.91   5.59    9.79


Basically what I am trying to do is to have only from the description 
onward.
506 through 509 have a tab
510 has 2 spaces
511 and 512 have a single space

The data is coming from OCR and basically I am cleaning it up in sed so by 
the time I get it to awk is in good shape. I figured out all the other 
cleanups this is the only one have not figured out. :-(