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From: dattier@ddsw1.MCS.COM (David W. Tamkin)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Global Empty Line Removal in vi?
Message-ID: <1991Jan26.233521.17721@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Date: 26 Jan 91 23:35:21 GMT
References: <1991Jan24.163844.7521@unmvax.cs.unm.edu>
Organization: Contributor Account at ddsw1, Wheeling, Illinois
Lines: 30

crowley@unmvax.cs.unm.edu (Charlie Crowley) wrote in
<1991Jan24.163844.7521@unmvax.cs.unm.edu>:

|  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

Er, uh, not quite.  :g/^$/d (or more simply, :v/./d, delete all lines on
which a search for . [wildcard for any character except newline] fails) will
remove ALL blank lines.  The original question was to reduce every series of
consecutive blank lines to one blank line.

Now, several people have posted that cat -s will do that.  *That works only
on Berkeley UNIX systems.*  The version of cat in System V-land doesn't
support that option: it uses -s for "silent" [i.e., don't say anything if a
requested input file doesn't exist].  Running something with multiple blank
lines through System V's cat -s doesn't strip the extra blank lines.  One can
always toss together a sed script.  If I can get one to work (I've been
trying, but hey, I'm an amateur and a novice at this), I'll post it.

David Tamkin  Box 7002  Des Plaines IL  60018-7002  708 518 6769  312 693 0591
MCI Mail: 426-1818  GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN  CIS: 73720,1570   dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com