in vi, if i type ctrl-J, i can shift the next line up to the current line.
I need to do this whenever a specific string exists (in particular ^M) ,however i have not been able to find a way to do this in vi, sed, or awk

seems simple enough.

can someone help me?

thanks in advance

You must mean shift-J, not control J.

In vi you can do this:
:g/^M/j

But to type the ^M, you need to type cntl-V followed by cntl-M.

thanks, but it does not join all of the ^Ms

240|^M\
^M\
^M\
Old Port Marketing order recd $62,664.- to ship 6/22/99^M\
^M\
^M\
^M\
^MCompleted by: C. Malczynski|


becomes:

240|^M\ ^M\
^M\ Old Port Marketing order recd $62,664.- to ship 6/22/99^M\
^M\ ^M\
^M\ ^MCompleted by: C. Malczynski|

but should be:

240|^M\ ^M\^M\ Old Port Marketing order recd $62,664.- to ship 6/22/99^M\^M\ ^M\^M\ ^MCompleted by: C. Malczynski|


this is what i typed :g/^M\\/j ----- (ctrl-V, ctrl-M)


any suggestions??

p.s. thanks, this has been stumping me for awhile

:g/^M\\$/j
and run the command a 2nd or third time until no more trailing ^M\ remain.

thanks, this has been really helpful, but i need to run this on several files that have >1000000 records, which i can break down into smaller files if need be (migrating data in case you haven't guessed), hence the reason i was trying to find a one time fell swoop, the solution you provided is much better than me scrolling for ^M and hitting Shft-J five or six times, but also doesn't lend itself to being run unattended, do you know of a way to peform the same task with sed?

if not, the help you have given me has been great, and i appreciate your quick responses.

thanks again

This is a sed script. It does not use a shell. You must get all 11 lines exactly as I have them. Call it combiner or something. Run it like:
combiner < oldfile > newfile

The paste command can be used for serial merging, e.g...