How join several lines in a file? 2

[inma]

Hi, I have a txt file which contains serveral lines, and I want delete the newline character to join them.
Can anybody help me?
Thanks

 

[praywin]

bash solution

while read line; do echo -n $line ;done < testinput

awk solution

awk '{printf $0}' testinput

Cheers,
Pravin.

 

[Ygor]

There is already a command to do exactly what you want called &quot;paste&quot;, use the -s option to combine subsequent lines of the input file.

e.g.
paste -s -d ' ' file1 > file2

The -d option allows you to specify a delimiter.

 

[inma]

Thanks for your reply.
Now I only want to delete the newline character of lines not starting with # character.

 

[praywin]

I have solution but its not completely correct. Try if it works for your input file.

awk '/^#/{printf "\n"$0"\n";next}{printf $0" "}' testinput

Cheers,
Pravin.

 

[inma]

Thanks very much Pravin, it works very well!!

 

[praywin]

Hi inma,
Good to know your problem has been solved. Anyway now that I have found it here is a cleaner solution.

awk '/^#/{if (a==&quot;&quot {printf $0&quot;\n&quot;} else {printf a&quot;\n&quot;$0&quot;\n&quot;}; a=&quot;&quot;;next} {(a==&quot;&quot?a=$0:a=a&quot; &quot;$0}' testinput

Cheers,
Pravin.

 

[inma]

Now I don`t want that a newline goes before the first # character of the first line.
What must I do?
Thanks

 

[dchoulette]

awk '/^#/ {printf("%s%s\n", nl, $0); sp=""; nl=""; next} {printf("%s%s", sp, $0); sp=" "; nl="\n"}' testinput

Some comments:
If the previous line started with a # (or we are at start of file), nothing to add at start of current line (sp=&quot;&quot;; nl=&quot;&quot
If the previous line did not start with a #, add a space before current line if it does not start with a # (sp=&quot; &quot and a newline if it starts with a # (nl=&quot;\n&quot.

 

[inma]

Thanks very much dchoulette, it works very well!!