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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Remove blank lines using cat command Post 302906689 by Scrutinizer on Monday 23rd of June 2014 03:53:28 AM
Old 06-23-2014
Quote:
Originally Posted by bakunin
hmm... How can i fly to the moon using an invalidated credit card and a screwdriver?

The short answer is: you can't because the tool you want to use (in this case "cat") isn't designed to do what you want. (Actually "cat" is for conCATenating files.)

[..]
Actually, GNU cat has enough bloat that it can delete repeated blank lines (cat -s), so it is somewhat surprising that there is no option for the removal of all blank lines.. Smilie
 

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CAT(1)								   User Commands							    CAT(1)

NAME
cat - concatenate files and print on the standard output SYNOPSIS
cat [OPTION]... [FILE]... DESCRIPTION
Concatenate FILE(s), or standard input, to standard output. -A, --show-all equivalent to -vET -b, --number-nonblank number nonempty output lines -e equivalent to -vE -E, --show-ends display $ at end of each line -n, --number number all output lines -s, --squeeze-blank suppress repeated empty output lines -t equivalent to -vT -T, --show-tabs display TAB characters as ^I -u (ignored) -v, --show-nonprinting use ^ and M- notation, except for LFD and TAB --help display this help and exit --version output version information and exit With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input. EXAMPLES
cat f - g Output f's contents, then standard input, then g's contents. cat Copy standard input to standard output. AUTHOR
Written by Torbjorn Granlund and Richard M. Stallman. REPORTING BUGS
Report cat bugs to bug-coreutils@gnu.org GNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/> General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/> Report cat translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/> COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. SEE ALSO
The full documentation for cat is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and cat programs are properly installed at your site, the command info coreutils 'cat invocation' should give you access to the complete manual. GNU coreutils 8.5 February 2011 CAT(1)
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