Thread: remove redundant white spaces in string

What are "redundant white spaces", and what algorithm have you in mind?

Originally Posted by ph3s

lets say i have a string

All the white space in that string look pretty essential to me

What I am asking for is a definition of "redundant white space", and also an explicit statement of what does it mean to remove them. For example, maybe given your example string, your desired result is:

Code:

"this is a string with redundant spaices in it"

or maybe it is:

Code:

"thisisastringwithredundantspaicesinit"

or maybe the string contain tab characters followed by space characters, and you only want to keep the first white space character, so you only keep the tab characters. Or maybe...

O, I see. My bad. I meant if more than one white space among two words = redundancy.

Answer A in your assumptions

Okay, I give up. I guess if you don't want to be precise, then you're just going to have a hard time solving problems because you won't be able to think clearly

Anyway, here's one way to solve your problem, more or less:

Code:

r = 0
w = 0
while string[r] is not a null character
    string[w] = string[r]
    increment r
    if string[w] is a white space character
        while string[r] is a white space character
            increment r
    increment w
string[w] = null character

Originally Posted by ph3s

what I have done to curse me like that?

Hey, it is just a conditional observation, not a curse

Originally Posted by ph3s

But I did exlained so you can see. Look at your post and examples. Which particular example you typed first?

Maybe laserlight was a little stressed out Anyway, the pseudo code in post #6 is a good starting place for what you want to do. Try applying that and if you have a problem post you code.

We are all getting stressed from time to time, like me now. I just don't follow in this part of pseudo code.

Code:

r = 0//got it

w = 0/got it

while string[r] is not a null character // that is ok

    string[w] = string[r]//yep all the steps to copy one

    increment r//string

    if string[w] is a white space character // right, lets say it meets '  '

        while string[r] is a white space character//here I'm stack

            increment r //what for ?

    increment w// to another

string[w] = null character // well yes, it has to end somewhere

The reason you increment r is to, well, skip the whitespace!

If there is whitespace eliminated, the resulting string should be shorter than it started out as. Laserlight's algorithm works in-place (meaning, the input string is modified), so w represents the current index in the new string, and r the current index in the old string (it will be ahead of any changes made, then at the end the new version is null terminated).

Thanks gens and ladies. Now I can see. is Anythink looks wrong?

Code:

main()
{
    char redundant[]= "here is  a    messy  string";
    char proper[64];
    int x=0, y=0;

    while ( redundant[x] != '\0')
    {
        proper[y]=redundant[x];

        x++;

        if (proper[y] == ' ')
        {
            while (redundant[x]== ' ')
                x++;
        }

        y++;
    }


    proper[y]='\0';

    printf("%s",proper);

}

Originally Posted by ph3s

Thanks gens and ledies. Now I can see. is Anythink looks wrong?

That should work. Just make sure you test it enough to be sure.