Help: Delete a single carriage return in a file, but not a double carriage return?

[Steve Anderson]

I'd like to use perl to remove all single carriage returns, but leave all
double carriage returns intact in a text file.

For example, the following:

foo bar baz
baz bar foo baz
baz

baz foo bar
baz

should become:

foo bar baz baz bar foo baz baz

baz foo bar baz

It sounds simple, but I haven't been able to figure out how to do this.
Can anyone give me a hand?

Thanks,

Steve

 

[Ben Morrow]

I'd like to use perl to remove all single carriage returns, but leave all
double carriage returns intact in a text file.

For example, the following:

foo bar baz
baz bar foo baz
baz

baz foo bar
baz

should become:

foo bar baz baz bar foo baz baz

baz foo bar baz

It sounds simple, but I haven't been able to figure out how to do this.
Can anyone give me a hand?

#!/usr/bin/perl

$/ = $\ = "\n\n";

while (<>) {
chomp;
s/\n//g;
print;
}

__END__

Ben

 

[Anno Siegel]

I'd like to use perl to remove all single carriage returns, but leave all ^^^^^^
double carriage returns intact in a text file.

For example, the following:

foo bar baz
baz bar foo baz
baz

baz foo bar
baz

should become:

foo bar baz baz bar foo baz baz

baz foo bar baz

It sounds simple, but I haven't been able to figure out how to do this.
Can anyone give me a hand?

You say "remove", but from your example you want to replace isolated
line feeds with blanks.

You can use lookbehind and lookahead to make sure a line feed is neither
preceded nor followed by another:

s/(?<!\n)\n(?!\n)/ /g;

Anno

 

[Steve Anderson]

You say "remove", but from your example you want to replace isolated
line feeds with blanks.

You're absolutely right, my text was wrong, my example was right. Thanks
for seeing through it, and thanks for the solution.

Steve