UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

i do lots of formatting of types/sorts on my laptop and this is probably one of the basic syntax I use

sed '/\<[0-9]*:/G;/\.$/G;' filename | fmt -w 80 > foo

if I add /**.*/;' to the sed command sometimes i am getting the right output some times I get line-errors...
even with basic syntax as I have put above this gives abnormal file output once in a while where I have tried
cat -v ; col -b and fmt -cw which have all worked but never all the time once in a while I can not figure out
why this syntx splits up some lines in the middle of sentences no matter what I try..
any feedback welcome ; thanx in advance moxxx68

Do you have any examples you can post? It's a little hard to know what s going on without them ...

i don't have any actual examples I can show:
but its simple ;
sed '/\.$/G;/[0-9]*;G;' filename
will put a new line at end of paragraph and a newline after any time stamp: both are necessary...
and the fmt -w 80
formats the file to an 80 width::
while a line error usually occurs when there is either a control charcter or a new line
character inserted accidently.. what I need is
a usniversal format of this
sed '#s/\(.*\)\s*\n/\1/' filename which will remove newline space characters in most forms of
sed and I have really no idea which sed does what yet so I need a way to implement this command so that all forms of sed recognize the syntax

Apologies I dont think without a specific example I will be able to help.

I'm really not sure how you can differentiate between a carriage return that's supposed to be there and one thats been accidentally placed in there anyway :-( In your example sed script any carriage return will be seen as and end of paragraph.

"thanks for your kind words but i didn't understand a word you said"
mouin

Sorry moxxx68.

You posted an example sed command:

sed '/\.$/G;/[0-9]*;G;' filename

This command adds an extra 'return' character at the end of each paragraph and after each time stamp. This work fine as far as I can tell.

You also said that you sometimes get extra new lines or control charcters inserted accidentally. What do you mean by this? Are these characters in the original files or after you have run the sed command on them?

these are probably typo errors, since I use ed as an editor alot and i find lots
of files with the same recurring error.
moxxx68