How to remove blank lines from a text file (in Unix)

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How to remove blank lines from a text file (in Unix)

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Question:

I need to remove all blank lines from a huge text file on a unix system. What's the easiest way to achieve this?

Answer:

Use the command line text editor sed and issue the statement shown below.
It will create a temporary file, afterwards replace the original file with it.

# the following uses the editor sed to find blank lines
# and delete them:

# in the regex ^ means beginning of line, 
# and $ means end of line

sed '/^$/d' myfile.txt >newfile.txt
mv newfile.txt myfile.txt

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Comments:

2007-10-03, 03:48:29

anonymous from United States

thanks a lot...
sed '/^$/d' myfile.txt >newfile.txt
is the only command worked for me after nearly an hour of using various scripts and techniques.

thanks a lot again
sundar.ece@gmail.com

2008-11-26, 07:44:44

prashantdeshani@yahoo.com from Switzerland

Hi,

I have tried the sed command as given in the example above.

It works fine except a small strange behaviour:

It 'always' removes the last line of the file.

Do let me know if I need to add something in the command line as I am doing exactly what is written above.

Thanks and Best Regards,
Prashant Deshani

2008-12-26, 05:49:40

[hidden] from United Kingdom

Thanks for your advice about removing blank line from a text file (in Unix).
Could you please also advise, how to split up a 'one line' document into a multi-line document. For example:-
a) Origindocument: -
<card><firstname>john</firstname&ge><lastname>smith</lastname></card>
b) RequirDocument
<card>
<firstname>john</firstname>
<lastname>smith</lastname>
</card>

I should be grateful for any advice.

John Smith
=========

2009-04-06, 06:05:35

anonymous from India

thanks a lot for this command

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