[SOLVED] Removing blank lines and commentary from a config file

grail · 08-19-2010, 04:51 AM

It's not something tricky like the file has been copied from a windows machine?

If you create a new file like:

Code:

jenhbvne

#kjeopb
rhiob

and then run the sed, does it leave only 2 lines?

rgdacosta · 08-19-2010, 04:59 AM

It does indeed change it!

konsolebox · 08-19-2010, 05:03 AM

Perhaps with grep also:

Code:

grep -v '^[[:blank:]]*\(\#.*\)\?$' file

Edit: I'm not sure if # needs to be escaped.

EricTRA · 08-19-2010, 05:05 AM

Hi,

Has to be something typical to your distro/sed version

Just tested it on Debian Squeeze, Lenny and RHEL5.3 and works as expected.

Code:

sed -i '/^$/d' testfile

only removes the blank lines and leaves comment lines alone.

Very strange indeed!

Kind regards,

Eric

grail · 08-19-2010, 06:31 AM

I am with Eric, I tried it in Ubuntu, Sourcemage, Slackware (live cd) and my own source distro and all have behaved the same with only removing blank lines
and leaving comments (using ^$ as regex)