I am trying to modify a file which appears to be multiple lines, but when I check in VIM it does not have any "^M" at the end of each line.

I opened the file in Word, and it shows a "¶" at the end of each line.

I am able to add a "~" at the end of each line using:

All I need now is to have all the lines concatenate into a long line, by modifying the file, not creating a new one.

any thoughts? thanks,

FYI - "^M" is how VI (and many other linux readers) interprets the DOS OEL terminators. These only appear in DOS-formatted ASCII. Most linux distributions include a "dos2unix" utility which can be used to convert these DOS terminators to UNIX terminators, which will cause the "^M"'s to disappear from the file when viewing with VI.

I know this doesn't answer your question, I'm just providing some clarification.

hi,

`t' is a kind of GOTO, `a' is just a mark, `:a' is where to go.

It does, thank you!

Assuming you are correct about only \r:

BTW, sed by default only operates on single lines at a time. It takes a line into it's pattern buffer, minus the newline, applies the given expressions to it, then re-adds the newline when printing out the results. So a simple "s///" on its own can't ever affect multiple lines.

To do so requires telling sed to store multiple lines into the buffer first, usually with the "N" command. Then the substitution pattern can target the newline between them. everToulouse showed you how it's done.

Here are a few useful sed references.
http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html
http://sed.sourceforge.net/grabbag/
http://sed.sourceforge.net/sedfaq.html
http://sed.sourceforge.net/sed1line.txt


tr is generally the better option, though. Notice, however, that just deleting the newline characters means the lines get concatenated without any spaces between them. So this might be closer to what you expect:

The -s option "squeezes" multiple newlines into a single space, so any blank lines will be removed. Remove it if not needed.