How to remove consecutive space in shell bash linux?

Question

I have string containing words. Between the words there is a random number of spaces ``` str="toto1 toto2 toto3 toto4 toto5 toto6" ``` How I can remove duplicated spaces and keep only one space between words?

Accepted Answer

Use `tr` with `-s` to squeeze repeated characters:

```
$ echo "$str" | tr -s ' '
toto1 toto2 toto3 toto4 toto5 toto6
```

or

```
$ tr -s ' ' <<< "$str"
toto1 toto2 toto3 toto4 toto5 toto6
```

Another funny approach is the one suggested by glenn hackman here. As he says,

Take advantage of the word-splitting effects of not quoting your variable

Example:

```
$ echo "$str"
toto1 toto2  toto3   toto4 toto5      toto6
$ echo $str
toto1 toto2 toto3 toto4 toto5 toto6
```

So you can save the converted string with:

```
new_str=$(echo $str)
```

How to remove consecutive space in shell bash linux?

Solution

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