How do I remove the line break from alternate lines in an ASCII file

Question

I have an ASCII file that contains data as follows

    459999XXX9998882      WTD CCD           3,500.00-         0.00         3,500.00-         0.00       0.00
       09/07/17  23:00:07   999999999999 000000000000 EONCO024 GTUR BR              AND PARDES  APIN
    459999XXX9998883      WTD CCD             400.00-         0.00           400.00-         0.00       0.00
       09/07/17  23:00:12   999999999999 000000000000 EOMCO015 P.G ROAD, ANNA HOT SECU  TLIN
    29999XXX99988829      INQ CCD               0.00          0.00             0.00          0.00       0.00
       09/07/17  23:00:41   999999999999 000000000000 EOMCO010 PUNA KUMBHARIA ROAD,   SUR        GJIN
    5459999XXX999888   INQ SAV               0.00          0.00             0.00          0.00       0.00    UNABLE TO PROC
       09/07/17  23:00:44   999999999999 000000000000 EONCO089 CTS NO 3985/5 ST STAND SOL      MHIN

I would like lines containing the dates to be contactenated to the line above it. Essenatilly I would like to remove all the line breaks from odd numbered lines. So the result is something like this

459999XXX9998882      WTD CCD           3,500.00-         0.00         3,500.00-         0.00       0.00 09/07/17  23:00:07   999999999999 000000000000 EONCO024 GTUR BR              AND PARDES  APIN
459999XXX9998883      WTD CCD             400.00-         0.00           400.00-         0.00       0.00 09/07/17  23:00:12   999999999999 000000000000 EOMCO015 P.G ROAD, ANNA HOT SECU  TLIN
29999XXX99988829      INQ CCD               0.00          0.00             0.00          0.00       0.00 09/07/17  23:00:41   999999999999 000000000000 EOMCO010 PUNA KUMBHARIA ROAD,   SUR        GJIN
5459999XXX999888      INQ SAV               0.00          0.00             0.00          0.00       0.00    UNABLE TO PROC 09/07/17  23:00:44   999999999999 000000000000 EONCO089 CTS NO 3985/5 ST STAND SOL      MHIN

I tried the solution provided here but then it removed all the linebreaks resulting in one single line! Would appreciate any ideas.

Possible duplicate of [How to merge every two lines into one from the command line?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9605232/how-to-merge-every-two-lines-into-one-from-the-command-line) — Thor, Oct 29 '18 at 22:23

Sundeep · Answer 1 · 2017-07-31T10:28:00.703

3

sed 'N;s/\n/ /' ip.txt

N add next line to pattern space
s/\n/ / change first newline character to space (or whatever is the separator)
Usage of \n might depend on sed implementation. This was tested on GNU sed

With perl, change newline character if line number is odd

perl -pe 's/\n/ / if $.%2' ip.txt

Can also use

xargs -d'\n' -n2 -a ip.txt

-d'\n' newline character as delimiter
-n2 two lines together as argument (space is used to combine them)

edited Jul 31 '17 at 10:28

answered Jul 31 '17 at 10:12

Sundeep

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You might additionally want to pipe that to `column -t` – hek2mgl Jul 31 '17 at 10:18
@hek2mgl good point, but not sure if OP's data is tab delimited and whether `AND PARDES APIN` is single or multiple column.. – Sundeep Jul 31 '17 at 10:19
Yes, it depends. – hek2mgl Jul 31 '17 at 10:20

Tom Fenech · Answer 2 · 2017-07-31T10:10:15.917

2

Print each line, alternating between a tab and a newline as the Output Record Separator ORS:

awk '{ ORS = NR % 2 ? "\t" : "\n" } 1' file

NR is the current record (line) number, so NR % 2 is true on odd-numbered lines.

Obviously, the tab "\t" can be changed to whatever you want to put between the lines that you're joining together.

edited Jul 31 '17 at 10:10

answered Jul 31 '17 at 10:05

Tom Fenech

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This command adds a tab to every 3rd, 6th , 9th rows. It seems to be indenting these lines with the TAB. – sridhar pandurangiah Jul 31 '17 at 10:56
I don't see why it would do anything every 3 rows - if there are already tabs at the start of your even-numbered lines, then you should change `"\t"` to `""`. – Tom Fenech Jul 31 '17 at 10:59

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 31 '17 at 10:14

0

You can use command

awk 'NR % 2 == 1 { printf $0; getline; print $0 }' filename

Which means "for every odd line print it without '\n', get next line, print it with '\n'".

answered Jul 31 '17 at 10:14

Binpord

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How do I remove the line break from alternate lines in an ASCII file

3 Answers3

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