Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi Everyone,

Im trying to write a shell script that removes a "newline character followed by a tab" throughout a file. basically it should get rid of it. Here's an example

File Before

The cat sat on the
mat

File After
The cat sat on the mat

This message writing screen has problems showing tabs but basically there is a tab character before the word mat. THe shell script should loop through the entire file and find and replace all occurences of new line follwed by tab with nothing.
Does anyone know how to write a shell script to do this?

thanks

Code:

sed -e :a -e '$!N;s/\n\t/ /;ta' -e 'P;D' filename

Hi tanku,

Thanks for you efforts but this didnt seem to work..is there any syntax errors with the command you have mentioned?

thanks

Code:

sed 's/[     ]+/ /g' file > newfile

[ ] literally contains a TAB character. You may need to type "Ctrl+V" then "TAB" to get the character.
/ / contains one space.

there is no syntax errors. it works fine on my gnu sed.

Code:

$ cat filename
The cat sat on the
        mat

$ sed -e :a -e '$!N;s/\n\t/ /;ta' -e 'P;D' filename
The cat sat on the mat

Sorry, I left a bit out of my earlier post.

Code:

sed "N;s/\n[    ]/ /g' filename

Hi Tanku..

Can u explain the usage
dont know the swiches -e:a -e
then ta
P;D

please help

thanks in advance
esham