How do I replace newline (\n) with sed under UNIX / Linux operating systems?
You can use the following sed command:
Adblock detected 😱
My website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to my visitors. I get it! Ads are annoying but they help keep this website running. It is hard to keep the site running and producing new content when so many people block ads. Please consider donating money to the nixCraft via
PayPal/
Bitcoin, or become a
supporter using Patreon.
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