Regular Expression.
The text editor TextPadã has this very useful feature. It provides a handy method for cleaning up observation files. The following examples show how to handle spaces and tabs.
In all examples the regular expression option show be selected in the replace dialogue box. Replacements can apply to the entire file or selected text.
Remove leading line spaces.
Find what: ^[space\t]+ Replace with: nothing
where space is the space character and nothing means literally nothing.
Remove extra spaces and tabs at end of line.
Find what: [space\t]+$ Replace with: nothing
Replace spaces with tabs in the observation file data.
Select all of the observation file after the pound symbols.
Find what: [space\t]+ Replace with: \t
Add extra dummy column to simplify copying/pasting.
Select all of the observation file after the pound symbols.
Find what: $ Replace with: \t or \t9999 to make it more visible.