How do I replace newline (\n) with sed under UNIX / Linux operating systems?
You can use the following sed command:
sed '{:q;N;s/\n//g;t q}' /path/to/data.txt |
sed '{:q;N;s/\n//g;t q}' /path/to/data.txt
You can replace newline (\n) with * character or word ‘FOO’:
sed '{:q;N;s/\n/*/g;t q}' /path/to/data.txt |
sed '{:q;N;s/\n/*/g;t q}' /path/to/data.txt
OR
sed '{:q;N;s/\n/FOO/g;t q}' /path/to/data.txt |
sed '{:q;N;s/\n/FOO/g;t q}' /path/to/data.txt
OR replace it with tab (\t):
sed '{:q;N;s/\n/\t/g;t q}' /path/to/data.txt |
sed '{:q;N;s/\n/\t/g;t q}' /path/to/data.txt
To update file use -i option:
sed -i '{:q;N;s/\n/\t/g;t q}' /path/to/data.txt |
sed -i '{:q;N;s/\n/\t/g;t q}' /path/to/data.txt
Posted by: Vivek Gite
The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix and open source topics via RSS/XML feed or weekly email newsletter.
4 comment
thanks..
very nice example
It doesnt work for me :(
$ sed ‘{:q;N;s/\n/\t/g;t q}’ /fi/fa/foo.fu
sed: 1: “{:q;N;s/\n/\t/g;t q}”: unexpected EOF (pending }’s)
Doesn’t work for me in Cygwin, if there are 17 lines the first line has 16 of the replacement, line 2 will have 15 etc until the last line does not have the replacement.
Simpler way to replace the end of the line:
sed ‘s/$/FOO/’ /path/to/data.txt