Remove line feed in data

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi
I have a file where there are line feeds in the data. I am not able to read the file from an application. I exported this data from Access database and many columns contain line feed.

My data looks like this

abcd,efgh,ijkl,mnop
abcd,ef
gh,ijkl,mnop
abcd,efgh,ij
kl,mnop

I want the data as

abcd,efgh,ijkl,mnop
abcd,efgh,ijkl,mnop
abcd,efgh,ijkl,mnop

I am thinking of looping through every line until it reaches the count of delimiter(in this case 3) and remove the line feed.

Can anyone help me out!!

2 
awk -F, '
NF == 4 {if (l) print l; print $0; l=""}
NF < 4  {l=l $0; if (gsub(",", ",", l) > 2) {print l; l=""}}
END {if (l) print l}
' data
3

Try also

awk -F, '
        {while (NF < 4) {getline X
                         $0 = $0  X
                        }
        }
1
' file
4

Another way you could try:

awk -F, 'p!=""{$0=p $0} NF<4{p=$0; next} {p=x}1' file
5

Hello dnat,

In case your Input_file is same as shown sample then following may also help you on same.

awk '{printf("%s%s",$0!~/^abcd/?"":(FNR==1?"":ORS),$0)} END{if($0!~/^abcd/){print ""}}'  Input_file

Thanks,
R. Singh

6

You've got to love the charity of people on this forum. You have a question, and you get multiple solutions on how to solve it!

7

Better ensure that getline was successful

awk -F, '
        {while (NF < 4 && getline X) $0 = $0  X
        }
1
' file

A sed solution

sed '
   :L
   s/,/&/3
   t
   $!N
   s/\n//
   tL
' file
1 Like
8

Yes, thanks, but then better

awk -F, '
        {while (NF < 4 && 1 == getline X)  $0 = $0  X
        }
1
' file

as getline returns -1 on error.

1 Like