Shell Programming and Scripting

I've been trying to merge a previous line when I find a pattern using sed with no luck. Maybe someone can help me.

I am trying to find </Endtag>. Once I find that, I want to merge the previous line with the current line. I can do it with the next line with using N in sed but not previous. Anyone have a suggestion?

Ex.
Hello how are you.
</Endtag> <New> I am fine.</New>
This is a test.

Results should be:

Hello how are you. </Endtag><New> I am fine.</New>
This is a test.

One way but with awk:

Code:

awk 'NR==1{printf $0;next}
/<\/Endtag>/{printf " " $0;next}
{printf "\n" $0}
END{print ""}
' file

Explanation:

NR==1{printf $0;next} # print the first line without a newline

/<\/Endtag>/{printf " " $0;next}# If we have a match, print a space before the line and read next line

{printf "\n" $0} # print a newline before the other lines

END{print ""} # print a newline at the end


If you get errors use nawk, gawk or /usr/xpg4/bin/awk on Solaris.

Regards

Code:

awk '/<\/Endtag>/{print l,$0}{l=$0}' file

Code:

sed -e :a -e '$!N;s/\n\(<\/Endtag>\)/\1/;ta' -e 'P;D' file

I got a SED version, but the output is like this, it outputs the line before the </Endtag> twice, like:

Hello how are you.
Hello how are you.</Endtag> <New> I am fine.</New>
This is a test.

Code:

sed '/<\/Endtag>/ !{
        h
        }
/<\/Endtag>/ {
        H
        x
        s/\n//
        }
' file

Thanks, this way almost work. The problem I found out with this is the awk statement throws an error and quits when it runs into a line with a % sign in it.

Ex.

When it process through lines it stopped on the following line.

Approximately 75% of the Earth is covered with water.
</EndTag>

It quits printing at the above line as give the following error.

Not enough argument for the printf statement: Approximately 75% of the Earth is covered in water. sprintf (Approximately 75% of the Earth is covered in water.

fpmurphy, your ways seems to work.

Thanks