converting spaces into dashes

Question

Given a file with multiple lines, I want to change every space to dash.

I did like that:

#!/bin/bash
while read line; do
    echo "${line// /-}"
done

This works just fine, but I need a better method!

Answer 1

The standard tr utility does exactly this:

tr ' ' '-' <filename.old >filename.new

You can use a tool like sponge to do in-place editing (hides the fact that a temporary file is being used):

tr ' ' '-' <filename | sponge filename

Answer 2

sed --in-place 's/ /-/g' /path/to/file

Answer 3

with perl:

perl -ne 's/ /-/g;print ' FILE 

Answer 4

Use -i to have it write the changes to the file or the -e to have it just write the changes to stdout without modifying the file.

sed -i 's/ /-/g' filename
sed -e 's/ /-/g' filename

Answer 5

I like to use replace.

replace " " "-" </path/to/file