Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!hybrid!scifi!bywater!uunet!convex!news
From: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Inserting Blank Line into File (sed/awk/?)
Message-ID: <1991Mar15.190607.5061@convex.com>
Date: 15 Mar 91 19:06:07 GMT
References: <807@oss670.UUCP>
Sender: news@convex.com (news access account)
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: CONVEX Software Development, Richardson, TX
Lines: 19
Nntp-Posting-Host: pixel.convex.com

From the keyboard of tkevans@oss670.UUCP (Tim Evans):
:I would like to be able to insert blank lines at regular intervals
:in a structured file.  Specifically, I want to place a blank line after
:every third line in my input file.  Every third line in the input file
:begins with a specific character string.

I hate doing multi-line things in sed: it's such a pain.

If you cna really do this just by putting an extra newline
after each third line rather than keying off /^Name:/, just
use one of these:

    awk '{ print; if (!(NR % 3)) print "\n" }'

    perl -pe 's/$/\n/ unless $. % 3'

    perl -pe '$. % 3 || s/$/\n/'

--tom