Hi,
how to remove the blank lines from the file only If we have more than one blank line.
thanks
rameez
awk '/^$/ { if (blank++) next; print }1' file
It woks fine.
Can you please explain the following part in the command
'{ if (blank++) next; print }1'
The variable blank will be zero initially, but non-zero (i.e. true) on subsequent runs.
The 1 is an awk idiom which matches and prints lines not handled by previous conditions.
Actually you should change it to '{ blank=0; print }' in order for the script to work correctly on files where there are multiple sequences of adjacent empty lines. Sorry for missing that.
Thanks...thats great!
Another way with awk yet :
awk 'NR==1 || NF || prvNF {print} {prvNF=NF}'
Jean-Pierre.
Sorry, it's still not right. Should test before I post. Apologies.
awk '/^$/{ if (! blank++) print; next } { blank=0; print }'file
(What a grand way to increase my post count ...)
From the cat(1) manpage
cat -s file
1 Like
On my AIX box, I must use -r or -S
Jean-Pierre.