Replace line breaks with spaces in the Bash #linux #bash #shell #string #file

replace_line_breaks_bash.md

By piping input, e.g., cat <some_file>, to the following command one can replace all line breaks with spaces

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

This will read the whole input, e.g., file, in a loop and then replace the newline(s) with a space.

Explanation:

• create a label via :a
• append the current and next line to the pattern space via N
• if we are before the last line, branch to the created label $!ba ($! means not to do it on the last line (as there should be one final newline)).
• finally the substitution replaces every newline with a space on the pattern space (which is the whole file).

source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1251999/sed-how-can-i-replace-a-newline-n