Delete new line

UNIX for Beginners Q & A
1

Hello All,

I have a file with records in delimited format with delimiter '^', there is a new line character in between data and causing issues while reading, any inputs in deleting new line character please?

Example:

Rec^IdealLoc^PersonID:118743^Long Description
\n
^7364563^4837567456^Long Description 
\n
^847653
Rec^City^PersonID:847565^Longdescription^523344^32564237645^LongD

Desired Output:

Rec^IdealLoc^PersonID:118743^Long Description^364563^4837567456^Long Description^847653
Rec^City^PersonID:847565^Longdescription^523344^32564237645^LongD
2

You are saying that there are extra <NL> chars in the file, on top of the usual ones, i.e. line terminators at the end-of-line?

3

Yes, I used '\n' just to imply new line

4

So you have legit newline characters in your file and illegit newline characters in your file.

So the first thing to do is to find out if there is a difference between the two because, if there isn't, how do you know which one's to delete?

Can you look at the file with a hex editor to actually see the ASCII value of the rogue characters? (Perhaps even ftp the file to another system (binary transfer) to use a hex editor on it.)

If there's a difference between legit and illegit characters then it must be possible to blow the illegit's away; but we need to know that first.

5

With that sparse specification, limited sample extent, just guessing the record structure (8 fields) and assuming the second record to be incomplete, how about

awk -F^ '{while (NF <= 7 && 1 == getline X) $0 = $0 X} 1' file
Rec^IdealLoc^PersonID:118743^Long Description^7364563^4837567456^Long Description^847653
Rec^City^PersonID:847565^Longdescription^523344^32564237645^LongD
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