topic Re: replacing /n with newline with ed. in Operating System - HP-UX

replacing /n with newline with ed.

Jonathan Corbeill — Tue, 02 Apr 2002 14:11:21 GMT

I am trying to replace a string in a file "/n" with a carriage return. the man page on ed uses the following example:
cat - << EOF | ed -s file-1
1,$ s/abc/xyz/
w file-2
q
EOF

how do i specify that i want to replace with a newline?

I've tried
cat - << EOF | ed -s file-1
1,$ s/\n/\r/g
w file-2
q
EOF

but that replaces the \n with the \r.

Re: replacing /n with newline with ed.

Steve Steel — Tue, 02 Apr 2002 14:20:24 GMT

Hi

In ed or vi

type ControlVEnter which will show ^M

This is a new line.

Steve Steel

Re: replacing /n with newline with ed.

Steve Steel — Tue, 02 Apr 2002 14:22:18 GMT

Hi

By enter I mean the return key

Or type ControlVControlM

Steve Steel

Re: replacing /n with newline with ed.

Rui Soares — Tue, 02 Apr 2002 14:26:07 GMT

Hi Jonathan,

Under the context of the ed command you're trying you'll need to "escape" the slash just before the "r" that represents the carriage return.

So use double slash:

\and press return to change line (then you just finnish the line).

Instead of:

\n

Good Luck,

Rumagoso

Re: replacing /n with newline with ed.

Rui Soares — Tue, 02 Apr 2002 14:30:05 GMT

Oops,

my post was victim of escaping!!!!
You should have seen:
\\that is double-slash instead of \\and

Re: replacing /n with newline with ed.

Jonathan Corbeill — Tue, 02 Apr 2002 14:38:46 GMT

Great input guys,
I'm almost there...

My current command looks like this:

cat - << EOF | ed -s work.txt
1,$ s/n/^M/g
w work2.txt
q
EOF

all occurences of the letter n are replaced with carriage returns. Thats mostly what I want but the backslash stays in the file. How do I say that i want the backslash and the n to be replaced?

Re: replacing /n with newline with ed.

Ceesjan van Hattum — Tue, 02 Apr 2002 14:45:10 GMT

Instead of using editor commands, you can also use a oneliner script:

awk 'BEGIN{FS="/n"}{
for (i=1;i<=NF;i++){
printf "%s\n",$i^J }
printf "\n";
}' infile > uitfile

FS is the fieldseperator to be replaced by 'n.
I tried it for multiple lines and works just fine.

Regards,
Ceesjan

Re: replacing /n with newline with ed.

Darrell Allen — Tue, 02 Apr 2002 15:49:05 GMT

How about a sed version:

sed 's,/n,,g' file-1 >file-2

This can be entered from command line or in a script. Note it really is 2 lines (the first ending with "\").

Darrell

Re: replacing /n with newline with ed.

Darrell Allen — Tue, 02 Apr 2002 15:50:13 GMT

Okay, it didn't post correctly. Let's try again.

sed 's,/n,
,g' file-1 >file-2

Darrell

Re: replacing /n with newline with ed.

Darrell Allen — Tue, 02 Apr 2002 15:53:54 GMT

It still didn't post correctly. There is supposed to be a "\" at the end of the first line.

Let's try it as an attachment.

Darrell