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Full Discussion: Remove newline character from column spread over multiple lines in a file
Top Forums UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers Remove newline character from column spread over multiple lines in a file Post 303038972 by Prathmesh on Wednesday 18th of September 2019 01:16:26 PM
Old 09-18-2019
Remove newline character from column spread over multiple lines in a file
Hi,

I came across one issue recently where output from one of the columns of the table from where i am creating input file has newline characters hence, record in the file is spread over multiple lines. Fields in the file are separated by pipe (|) delimiter. As header will never have newline character, I am trying to compare if other rows have same number of fields as that of header and if number of fields in particular row is less than number of fields in header line then I am removing newline character at the end of the line. I was able to do this for row spread over two lines but, I am not getting correct output for lines spread over multiple lines.

Below is test input file and expected output file -

Input file -
Code:
$ cat input
id|country|desscription|Language
1|UNITED STATES|WASHINGTON, D.C.|English
2|UNITED KINGDOM|Capital of UK is LONDON|English
3|NEPAL|Capital of NEPAL is
KATHMANDU|Nepali
4|QATAR|DOHA
is capital of
QATAR|Urdu
5|INDIA|capital
of
INDIA
is DELHI|Hindi
$

Expected output file -
Code:
id|country|desscription|Language
1|UNITED STATES|WASHINGTON, D.C.|English
2|UNITED KINGDOM|Capital of UK is LONDON|English
3|NEPAL|Capital of NEPAL is KATHMANDU|Nepali
4|QATAR|DOHA is capital of QATAR|Urdu
5|INDIA|capital of INDIA is DELHI|Hindi

Below code worked for row spread over two lines -
Code:
$ awk -F"|" '{if(NR==1){COL=NF}}{if(NF < COL){ sub(/\n/, ""); T=$0; getline; print T $0; next}}1' input
id|country|desscription|Language
1|UNITED STATES|WASHINGTON, D.C.|English
2|UNITED KINGDOM|Capital of UK is LONDON|English
3|NEPAL|Capital of NEPAL is KATHMANDU|Nepali
4|QATAR|DOHA is capital of
QATAR|Urdu5|INDIA|capital
of INDIA
is DELHI|Hindiis DELHI|Hindi
$

I also tried below code but it is not giving expected output -
Code:
 $ awk -F"|" '{if(NR==1){COL=NF}}{
> L_NF=NF
> C_NR=NR
> NL=$0
> CNT=0
> while(L_NF != COL)
> {
> C_NF=NF
> sub(/\n/, "");
> getline;
> NL=NL" "$0;
> CNT=+1
> L_NF=C_NF+NF
> }
> print NL
> }
> {
> for(i=0;i<=CNT;i++)
> {
> next
> }
> {
> print $0
> }}' input
id|country|desscription|Language
1|UNITED STATES|WASHINGTON, D.C.|English
2|UNITED KINGDOM|Capital of UK is LONDON|English
3|NEPAL|Capital of NEPAL is  KATHMANDU|Nepali 4|QATAR|DOHA  is capital of
QATAR|Urdu 5|INDIA|capital  of
INDIA  is DELHI|Hindi is DELHI|Hindi
$

Can someone please help me in this?
 

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LEARN ABOUT LINUX

colrm

COLRM(1)						    BSD General Commands Manual 						  COLRM(1)

NAME

     colrm -- remove columns from a file

SYNOPSIS

     colrm [start [stop]]

DESCRIPTION

     The colrm utility removes selected columns from the lines of a file.  A column is defined as a single character in a line.  Input is read
     from the standard input.  Output is written to the standard output.

     If only the start column is specified, columns numbered less than the start column will be written.  If both start and stop columns are spec-
     ified, columns numbered less than the start column or greater than the stop column will be written.  Column numbering starts with one, not
     zero.

     Tab characters increment the column count to the next multiple of eight.  Backspace characters decrement the column count by one.

ENVIRONMENT

     The LANG, LC_ALL and LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the execution of colrm as described in environ(7).

EXIT STATUS

     The colrm utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

SEE ALSO

     awk(1), column(1), cut(1), paste(1)

HISTORY

     The colrm command appeared in 3.0BSD.

BSD
								  August 4, 2004							       BSD
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