How can I conserve the blanks when I assign to env variable?
 

Hi All,

I'm working on Compaq Computer Corporation Tru64 UNIX V5.1.

see I need store the result of this command in a env variable:
(please where you see "-" is blanks)

$ sed -n 3p file
0000311CDS-009384---------------0.00------------0.00-----------0.00

this is my result:
$ line=`sed -n 3p file`
$ echo $line
0000311CDS 009384 0.00 0.00 0.00

I need conserve the blanks! but these are removed.

IMPORTANT NOTE!: I found the same frustation making this thread!
if i write consecutive blanks these are automatically removed after post, thats is why I replaced the " " by "-".

Could you please help me??
Thanks in advace!!!

Ignore what I said, the problem was in the quoting, not the field separator.

It is probably only removing the blanks when you print (echo), they should still be in the variable. Quoting it should solve the problem.

Actually, it's not a bad idea to quote all variables in bash, including assignments, unless you explicitly want to word split (automatic word splitting is stupid behaviour IMO).

Two things are at play here. First, if you post your formated text in [CODE] tags, the formatting will be preserved.
Second, the spaces are kept intact when assigned to your variable. If, however, you pass the variable as an argument to a function or as a commandline argument, the shell will expand it into multiple whitespace-delimited arguments. If you want the variable to be used as a single argument, then enclose it in double quotes:
--- rod.

Thanks guys!!!