Merge lines until known character reached

Hello all,

Hopefully this should be an easy one for you. I have a file that contains a list of parameters and their values. Some of these values are 2D arrays split over several lines, I need to move these so the parameter name and it's full value is all on one line. The parameters are separated by semi-colons.

That is I have a file that looks like the following:

param_a = 1 2;
 param_b = 3 4 
 5 6;
 param_c = 5;
 param_d = 6
 7
 8
 9;

etc

What I need for output is

param_1 = 1 2;
 param_b = 3 4 5 6;
 param_c = 5;
 param_d = 6 7 8 9;

I have the following so far but it doesn't work as it ignores the lines that contain the semi-colon.

awk '/;/{if (NR!=1)print "";next}{printf "%s ",$0}END{print "";}' testfile >> testfileout

something like this:

awk '{printf("%s%s", $0, (/;/)?ORS:"")}' myFile

That does the job perfectly. Thanks. Any chance you could explain it? My awk is terrible

Also would I need to pipe the output to a new file or is there any way to make the changes directly in the original file?

awk '{printf("%s%s", $0, (/;/)?ORS:" ")}' myFile

For each record/line, printf with 2 parameters (%s%s):

1. First parameter is the line/record itself ($0)
2. For the second parameter, if the line contains a ; , output ORS (by default EndOfLine); if not - output a space " "

To save result in the same files, there're many ways to skin that cat:

awk '{printf("%s%s", $0, (/;/)?ORS:"")}' myFile >| /tmp/$$ && mv /tmp/$$ myFile

OR

 {rm myFile; awk '{printf("%s%s", $0, (/;/)?ORS:"")}' >| myFile; } < myFile

Thanks. really appreciated.

Try also

awk '{while (!(/;/)) {getline X; $0=$0 X}} 1' file