Question

______ option is used for compressing multiple consecutive characters.

(a) -d

(b) -c

(c) -n

(d) -s

The question was posed to me in a job interview.

My doubt stems from Unique and tr Command in section Simple Filters of Unix

Answer 1

The correct choice is (d) -s

For explanation I would say: tr command can also remove multiple consecutive characters from a line by using -s option. This will make the line squeeze from multiple consecutive occurrences of a character to a single character. For example, to squeeze multiple contiguous spaces use the following command: