sed/awk/python replace all spaces between characters after string match

Question

I want to delete all spaces between characters after an initial match. An example is

exmpl 0 t h i s a r e t he spaces to d e l e t e exmpl 1 m o r e spaces to d e l exmpl 2 o r s m t h completely d i f f e r e n t exmpl 12 y e t another l i n e 

which's output should be:

exmpl 0 thisarethespacestodelete exmpl 1 morespacestodel exmpl 2 orsmthcompletelydifferent exmpl 12 yetanotherline 

The spaces between the initial text and the numbers, and the numbers and the following text could also be tabs.

I am able to match the first and second part, e.g., in sed by

sed -i 's/\(exmpl\s*[0-9]*\s*\)\(.*\)/\1\2/' 

but I can't figure out to remove all the spaces in \2.

Answer 1

Using sed:

sed -e 's/ //3g' file exmpl 0 thisarethespacestodelete exmpl 1 morespacestodel exmpl 2 orsmthcompletelydifferent exmpl 12 yetanotherline 

will do replacement from the 3rd match