sed and joining lines questions

[Scott G. Gallup]

Hello,

I have a text file where I wish to join 3 consecutive lines into one line using sed.

The first line always has the following word (Commercial) as the first word of the line and I want to append the next two lines to create a single line.

I have been able to join two consecutive lines using sed but joining three lines has eluded me.

Any help, suggestions, examples would be greatly appreciated

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi Scott:

Try:

# sed 'N;s/\n/ /;N;s/\n/ /' filename

Regards!

...JRF...

[Chris Vail]

James--Thou art the sed master......



Chris

[Vitek Pepas]

Any ideas how to join all the lines in a file into one line using sed?

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Vitek:

In answer to your question:

# echo `cat filename`

...or:

# xargs < filename

Regards!

...JRF...

[Ramkumar Devanathan]

Scott,

sed '/^Commercial/ N;s/\n/ /;N;s/\n/ /' filename

would be exactly what you are looking for.

- ramd.

[Scott G. Gallup]

James,

Worked like a charm.

Thanks for the quick response.

Can I assume the reply for Vitek is to another posting?

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again) Scott:

The reply to Vitek was in answer to his query *within* this post. :-))

Regards!

...JRF...

[Vitek Pepas]

James,
Thanks, but your solution adds extra spaces between the lines. Removing them may not be easy if original lines also contained spaces.

Scott,
I'm sorry for using your posting, I should have opened my own ...
Please do me a favor and assign 7 pts for James on my behalf.
Thank you.