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sed replace end of line with character

Hi, if I have a file with 10 lines, and all I want is to join the list of lines together in my file into a single line, by the characer '&', can someone explain why I need to do the following.

Code:

sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/\&/g'

And can not with the following.

Code:

sed 's/\n/\&/g'

because sed is line based, to doesn't see the \n character, as that delimits the lines it processes.

tr would work easily though...

Code:

tr '\n' '&'

Quote:

Originally Posted by grob115 (Post 4890600)

Hi, if I have a file with 10 lines, and all I want is to join the list of lines together in my file into a single line, by the characer '&', can someone explain why I need to do the following.

Code:

sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/\&/g'

And can not with the following.

Code:

sed 's/\n/\&/g'

\n isn't part of the buffer (pattern space) when one line is stored, it is when multiple lines are stored in the buffer.

Have a look here: How to match newlines in sed

BTW: Wouldn't this be a better solution:

Code:

cat infile | tr '\n' '&'

Ah damn. Thanks guys. Knew 'sed' is line based but got lost in within what I was trying to do.

I like to use paste for this transformation.

InFile ...

Code:

albert

bernard

charles

david

edward

frank

george

henry

irving

john

Code ...

Code:

paste -sd\& $InFile > $OutFile

OutFile ...

Code:

albert&bernard&charles&david&edward&frank&george&henry&irving&john

Daniel B. Martin

Code:

awk 'ORS="&"' file

Quote:

Originally Posted by grail (Post 4891561)

Code:

awk 'ORS="&"' file

This awk produces a character string with a trailing ampersand. That's not exactly what the OP asked for.

Daniel B. Martin

Quote:

Originally Posted by acid_kewpie (Post 4890636)

tr would work easily though...

Code:

tr '\n' '&'

This code ...

Code:

echo

echo; echo "Method of LQ Moderator acid_kewpie as posted"

echo; echo "InFile ..."; cat $InFile

tr '\n' '&' $InFile > $OutFile

echo "OutFile ..."; cat $OutFile



echo

echo; echo "Method of LQ Moderator acid_kewpie with <"

echo; echo "InFile ..."; cat $InFile

tr '\n' '&' < $InFile > $OutFile

echo "OutFile ..."; cat $OutFile

... produces this output ...

Code:

Method of LQ Moderator acid_kewpie as posted



InFile ...

albert

bernard

charles

david

edward

frank

george

henry

irving

john

tr: extra operand `/home/daniel/Desktop/LQfiles/dbm630inp.txt'

Try `tr --help' for more information.

OutFile ...





Method of LQ Moderator acid_kewpie with <



InFile ...

albert

bernard

charles

david

edward

frank

george

henry

irving

john

OutFile ...

albert&bernard&charles&david&edward&frank&george&henry&irving&john&

Why is it necessary to use the "<" to avoid the "extra operand" error message?

Daniel B. Martin

Quote:

Originally Posted by danielbmartin (Post 4891593)

Why is it necessary to use the "<" to avoid the "extra operand" error message?

Because tr doesn't accept a file name as argument: it works only on standard input.

Quote:

Originally Posted by druuna (Post 4890637)

Have a look here: How to match newlines in sed

I clicked and got a pure gray screen; no text.

Daniel B. Martin

Quote:

Originally Posted by danielbmartin (Post 4891601)

I clicked and got a pure gray screen; no text.

Daniel B. Martin

Works on my side. Checked with Opera and disabled: cookies, plugins and javascript.

Just tried it with Firefox (Iceweasel) and it shows a grey screen....... Try manually adding index.php

Quote:

This awk produces a character string with a trailing ampersand. That's not exactly what the OP asked for.

As does the tr solution, I picked up on the idea of replace all newlines with an ampersand as opposed to create a string with ampersand as the separator.

Quote:

Originally Posted by druuna (Post 4891641)

Try manually adding index.php

This did the trick! Thank you.

Daniel B. Martin

Code:

sed -n -e1h -e'2,$'H -e'$x' -e'$s/\n/\&/g' -e'$p'