How to insert a space between all characters

espiesior · 04-12-2009, 08:56 PM

Hello all, I would really appreciate any help with this!

I have a file with a large(!) list of words:

Code:

apple
banana
happy
easter
etc.

Using bash, I would like to insert a space between every character. (However, no spaces at the beginning or end of the word.)

For example:

Code:

a p p l e
b a n a n a
h a p p y
e a s t e r
e t c .

How can I go about this in bash?

Thank you for any help!

PTrenholme · 04-12-2009, 09:21 PM

Does it have to be bash? The command sed 's/$.$/\1 /g;s/ $//' words works quite well.

Code:

$ cat words
apple
banana
happy
easter
etc.
$ sed 's/\(.\)/\1 /g;s/ $//' words
a p p l e
b a n a n a
h a p p y
e a s t e r
e t c .

Note: Since the dot matches any character, the above will just add a space after every character in the file with no attempt to verify that the character string is actually a word.

espiesior · 04-12-2009, 09:28 PM

Thank you, will try it out!