Converting columns of text to rows, with blank lines

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I've spent the past hour trying different things and googling for this solution and cannot find the answer. Found variations of this, but not this exact thing.

I have the following text, which is the output from our mainframe. Each field is on a separate line, with a blank line between each record. I want to the lines together. A blank line indicates a new row. Note that some of the fields contain slashes, periods, and other punctuation. Also the number of lines to join is variable, but records are always separated by a single blank line.

This is the contents of the source text file:

7LKZB88901
DC090SDFKGHSDD
REJECT REASON DDP/09/Q
SCC/GO/SEX.M.DNY/ALASKA/ CONTACT THE DENYING AGENCY
For the following
DUPLICATE

7LKZB88902
DC090RDFK1HSDD
PENDING

8PKZB88903
DC0901DFK1HSD7
ACCEPT

7LKZB88901
DC090SDFKGHSDD
REJECT REASON DDP/09/Q
SCC/GO/SEX.M.DNY/ALASKA/ CONTACT THE DENYING AGENCY
For the following
ERROR

5KZZB88912
DC0901DFF1HGG2
ACCEPT

And here's what I want the output to look like:

7LKZB88901 DC090SDFKGHSDD REJECT REASON DDP/09/Q SCC/GO/SEX.M.DNY/ALASKA/ CONTACT THE DENYING AGENCY For the following DUPLICATE
7LKZB88902 DC090RDFK1HSDD PENDING
8PKZB88903 DC0901DFK1HSD7 ACCEPT
7LKZB88901 DC090SDFKGHSDD REJECT REASON DDP/09/Q SCC/GO/SEX.M.DNY/ALASKA/ CONTACT THE DENYING AGENCY For the following ERROR
5KZ4B88912 DC0901DFF1HGG2 ACCEPT

My script foo isn't powerful enough. :frowning: Any help is appreciated with this one. :b:

2

How about

awk '$1=$1' OFS=" " RS= file
7LKZB88901 DC090SDFKGHSDD REJECT REASON DDP/09/Q SCC/GO/SEX.M.DNY/ALASKA/ CONTACT THE DENYING AGENCY For the following DUPLICATE
7LKZB88902 DC090RDFK1HSDD ACCEPT
8PKZB88903 DC0901DFK1HSD7 ACCEPT
7LKZB88901 DC090SDFKGHSDD REJECT REASON DDP/09/Q SCC/GO/SEX.M.DNY/ALASKA/ CONTACT THE DENYING AGENCY For the following DUPLICATE
5KZZB88912 DC0901DFF1HGG2 ACCEPT

Might not work with all awk version, pls. post yours.

1 Like
3

That didn't work for me, it concatenated all records into one single row, rather than each record into its own row.

This is a RHEL 6 server, the awk is GNU awk v3.1.7

Thanks

4

Try RS="" and / or RS="\n\n" .

1 Like
5

Hmm..

The first one removes the blank lines, but does not concatenate any lines.

The second one concatenates all lines from all records into a one single row.

6 
awk '$1=$1' RS= infile
1 Like
7

Yikes, ok, I just realized it's not a blank line in between records. It's a line containing a single " " space character.

I have deleted all of those single-spaces, so the blank lines are truly blank lines, and the solution worked.

thank you!

8 
awk '$1=$1' RS="\n^ *$\n" infile
2 Likes