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From: crowley@unmvax.cs.unm.edu (Charlie Crowley)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Global Empty Line Removal in vi?
Message-ID: <1991Jan24.163844.7521@unmvax.cs.unm.edu>
Date: 24 Jan 91 16:38:44 GMT
Sender: crowley@unmvax.cs.unm.edu (Charlie Crowley)
Organization: University of New Mexico
Lines: 19


 In <1991Jan24.064310.8077@midway.uchicago.edu>
zi0h@quads.uchicago.edu (W. Ishii) writes:
> 
>Hello there!  As a vi novice (maybe a stronger term is called for--vi idiot,
>probably), I've been stuck for about a week now trying to figure out how to
>globally remove multiple blank lines from text.

Another solution is to use the regular expression capabilities of the ex/ed
editor underlying vi. To wit:

:g/^$/d

That is, ':' to signal an ex command, 'g' do this globally, '/^$/ for all
blank lines (that is, lines whose beginning (^) and end ($) are right
together), 'd' deleted the line

Charlie Crowley
University of New Mexico