Shell Programming and Scripting

hi,

I want to combine two lines in same file. If the line ends with '&' it should belongs to previous line only
Here i am writing example.

Ex1:
line 1 : return abcdefgh&
line 2 : ijklmnopqr&
line 3 : stuvw&
line 4 : xyz

output should be
line 1: return abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

joint based on '&' .
Thanks in Advance

Added some lines as example to show it will not append other lines below:

Code:

$> cat infile
abcdefgh&
ijklmnopqr&
stuvw&
xyz
some
more bla
$> sed -e :a -e '/&$/ {N; s/&\n//}; ta' infile
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
some
more bla

Try this,

cat <Filename> | xargs -E '&' | sed 's/& //g'

why is xyz joined together then?

HI ramesh SRK,

Thank you. "cat <Filename> | xargs -E '&' | sed 's/& //g'" this is working. But still some problem... But some problem.
here i ll expalin with example

line 1 : abcdefgh&
line 2 : ijklmnopqr&
line 3 : stuvw&
line 4 : xyz

Ur script output : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.

but
line 1 : return abcdefgh&
line 2 : ijklmnopqr&
line 3 : stuvw&
line 4 : xyz
line 5 : lalalala

then output should come
line 1 : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
line 2 : lalala

but evrything is coming in a single line
line 1 : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzlalala

please help me ....

Did you ignore my answer? It does exactly what you asked now the 2nd time. I just forgot to add the word "return" in the first line but it doesn't matter generally and can be added. Result should be the same.

Edit:
Don't want to sound rude, just wondering.

sorry Zaxxon....I am not much familiar with shell scripting. Just learning now. I dont know exact use of "sed" command. I just copied ur code and tried here . :-)
But error coming "sed: command garbled: /&$/ {N; s/&\n//}; ta"

I couldnt fix this error.