Combine two lines of text sequentally

[kb0rhe]

I have a file that has multiple lines exactly 4 lines per product.

I would like to combine every two lines into one line.

E BRG 100023 0000 00000545
Z BRG 100023 GASOHOL TEST KIT

The two lines below - The actual file has about 24,000 lines.
I have been working in this for a while now. And I boils down to me just being stupid.

I was thinking of a counter and reset every two lines.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[KevinADC]

post some sample lines from the file and explain in detail what you want to combine and exlain how you want to combine them.




- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!

 

[kb0rhe]

Below is a sample of the file I am importing. (FILE 1)
SAMPLE FILE 2 is what I am asking for help on.
SAMPLE FILE 2 is a representative of what I am asking for help on.
FILE 1 has six lines of data I want three.
Combine Line 1 with Line 2, Line 3 with Line 4, Line 5 with line 6.

This file is huge - 24,000 lines of data.
I want to combine into one line and I will be extracting some data from each line to simplify the single line even more. (See Sample File 3)

I was thinking of a 'for' loop, and counting by two's, but I am at a loss here. I can't figure this one out.




************SAMPLE FILE 1 **************************
E BRG 100023 0000 00000545
Z BRG 100023 GASOHOL TEST KIT
E BRG 100024 0000 00014145
Z BRG 100024 THREAD KIT-MASTER
D BRG 100025 0000 00004780
Z BRG 100025 HOURMETER
***********END FILE 1 ******************************

************SAMPLE FILE 2 **************************
E BRG 100023 0000 00000545 Z BRG 100023 GASOHOL TEST KIT
************END FILE 2****The above is one line now**

Utlimately I want the this as the final output

BRG 100023 GASOHOL TEST KIT $5.45

 

[KevinADC]

a couple of ways to combine the two lines:

open(IN,'<file1.txt') or die "$!";
open(OUT,'>file2.txt') or die "$!";
while (<IN>) {
   chomp;
   print OUT;
   print OUT "\n" unless ($. % 2);
}
close(IN);
close(OUT);
print "finished";

or as a one-liner:

perl -ne "chomp; print; print \"\n\" unless ($. % 2)" file1.txt >file2.txt

24,000 lines is not a huge file. The above one-liner should take only few seconds to complete. The other code might take a little more time to complete but not much.

Then work on your final output and post your code after you get it working or if you get stuck.

- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!