GM,

I have an issue at work, which requires a simple solution. But, after multiple attempts, I have not been able to hit on the code needed.

I am assuming that sed, awk or even perl could do what I need.

I have an application that adds extra blank page feeds, for multiple reports, when sending these print jobs to CUPS.

Unfortunately, it would be very time consuming to have each of the developers go back and remove these extra page feeds, through hundreds of different reports, not to mention that would require QA, Release Management, and official patches for all of our customers.

Here's what I've done already.

I am intercepting the raw print jobs when they come into CUPS, as plain text PostScript files.

I have identified the actual lines that need to be removed from each job.

If I edit the file manually, and remove the lines manually, the subsequent printout works perfectly, with the blank pages suppressed.

But, I've been trying to use normal KSH or BASH to programatically remove the offending lines.

Unfortunately, in doing so, the script removes ALL of the necessary hidden formatting / special characters.

If I edit the file by hand, and just remove these offending lines, the document prints perfectly.

If I run the PostScript file through my "filter" script, it removes all of the special characters, and the postscript data itself is sent to the printer.

Let's say hypothetically that the following 4 lines are found. These same 4 lines can occur at different places inside of the postscript job, but normally, they will have data inserted between rows.

If these same 4 lines occur, sequentially, right after each other, without any other data, then I want to remove them:

abc
def
ghi
jkl

It is important that I must not remove any special formatting or characters from any previous or future lines within the file.

Thanks in advance,

JCF