Sponsored Content
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
 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Remove blank lines

¿How can i remove blank lines between all lines in a long text file? Example WrongFile.txt : Line 1 Line 2 Line 3 CorrectFile.txt : Line 1 Line 2 Line 3 Thanks in advance :confused: (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: osymad
4 Replies

2. Shell Programming and Scripting

remove blank lines

I have joined 2 files. Join command worked fine. but the result showing extra blank lines. I tried to remove blank spaces by using awk (-- -42 RS= ORS="\n\n" file.txt) and sed (sed '/^ *$/d' file.txt)commands but didn't remove any Any suggestions plz:D 123 tab ....... ......tab .......234... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: repinementer
3 Replies

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

Cat Command and Blank Lines

Hi All, I was testing for blank lines and I want to use the cat command only for groupline in `cat /home/test/group` do if then echo "blank found" fi done I want to check if the current line read is a blank line. I have tested with $groupline="\n" ,... (11 Replies)
Discussion started by: datkan
11 Replies

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

Remove blank lines

I really hope someone can help me with this. I have several php files from a forum that I run, that now for some reason have blank lines after every line. Is there an easy way to make a script that does the following: * If there are consecutive blank lines, delete all of them except one. * If... (9 Replies)
Discussion started by: KidCactus
9 Replies

5. Shell Programming and Scripting

remove blank lines and merge lines in shell

Hi, I'm not a expert in shell programming, so i've come here to take help from u gurus. I'm trying to tailor a csv file that i got to make it work for the LOAD FROM command. I've a datatable csv of the below format - --in file format xx,xx,xx ,xx , , , , ,,xx, xxxx,, ,, xxx,... (11 Replies)
Discussion started by: dvah
11 Replies

6. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Grep command to remove blank lines

The following grep command grep -v "^$" filename > newfilename does not populate the new file with any data. I see it search the entire input file but the output file never gets filled. Is this not the correct command for what Im looking to do? (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: aispg8
2 Replies

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

How to remove blank lines

Hi, I am facing a problem related to removing blank lines from a text document. Input Error 17-05-2011 11:01:15 VisualSVN Server 2.1 1001 The following information was included with the event: line3 line4 Error 17-05-2011 11:00:25 VisualSVN Server 2.1 ... (13 Replies)
Discussion started by: mayursingru
13 Replies

8. UNIX and Linux Applications

remove all blank lines

When I 'vi' my test file I see some blank lines. However once I do :set list to display hidden characters, I see the empty lines literally like this: ^I$ How do I remove them? I cannot find a regex to match them. (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: alexsuv
3 Replies

9. Shell Programming and Scripting

Cat Command on File not printing "Blank" Lines?

Hello All, I have a bash script and in it at some point I call an Expect Script that does some stuff and saves its output in a ".txt" file. Example "/path/to/my/file/Expect_Output.txt" file: notice the 2nd line is empty in the file... Data for Host-1 (192.168.1.110) Checking the... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: mrm5102
2 Replies

10. Shell Programming and Scripting

Remove Blank lines in VI

Hi, Which option is used to remove blank lines in VI (AIX). ? Regards, Siva (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: ksgnathan
6 Replies
CAT(1)							      General Commands Manual							    CAT(1)

NAME
cat - catenate and print SYNOPSIS
cat [ -u ] [ -n ] [ -s ] [ -v ] file ... DESCRIPTION
Cat reads each file in sequence and displays it on the standard output. Thus cat file displays the file on the standard output, and cat file1 file2 >file3 concatenates the first two files and places the result on the third. If no input file is given, or if the argument `-' is encountered, cat reads from the standard input file. Output is buffered in the block size recommended by stat(2) unless the standard output is a terminal, when it is line buffered. The -u option makes the output completely unbuffered. The -n option displays the output lines preceded by lines numbers, numbered sequentially from 1. Specifying the -b option with the -n option omits the line numbers from blank lines. The -s option crushes out multiple adjacent empty lines so that the output is displayed single spaced. The -v option displays non-printing characters so that they are visible. Control characters print like ^X for control-x; the delete char- acter (octal 0177) prints as ^?. Non-ascii characters (with the high bit set) are printed as M- (for meta) followed by the character of the low 7 bits. A -e option may be given with the -v option, which displays a `$' character at the end of each line. Specifying the -t option with the -v option displays tab characters as ^I. SEE ALSO
cp(1), ex(1), more(1), pr(1), tail(1) BUGS
Beware of `cat a b >a' and `cat a b >b', which destroy the input files before reading them. 4th Berkeley Distribution May 5, 1986 CAT(1)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 10:41 PM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy