Date: Sun, 6 Sep 2009 16:33:35 -0700 From: Gary Kline <kline@thought.org> To: Mak Kolybabi <mak@kolybabi.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: is there a way of usinf greo to find 3 or 4 blank lines? Message-ID: <20090906233335.GB11209@thought.org> In-Reply-To: <20090906204412.GA28721@brisbane.nepharia.org> References: <20090906003651.GA7388@thought.org> <20090906204412.GA28721@brisbane.nepharia.org>
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On Sun, Sep 06, 2009 at 03:44:13PM -0500, Mak Kolybabi wrote:
> On 2009-09-05 17:36, Gary Kline wrote:
> > in my manuscript, i have many places where i'ved used several newlines to
> > indicate a jump in time, or topic, or mood, or <<whatever>>. i have lost these
> > vertical spacing in all but my original draft. can i use grep somehow to find
> > these extra newlines?
> >
> > if not grep, then sed, ed, or what?!
>
> Sed has the ability to pull into the current line the next line, appended and
> separated by a "\n" character. It's hard to use correctly, I've found, and my
> simple demo:
>
> sed -e '/^$/{N;N;N; s/^\n\n\n$/===4 blank lines==/; }'
>
> Does not quite work as I'd hoped. But hopefully it's enough to get you started.
>
Thanks, Mak. iT really *is* more difficult that grep can handle. I could catch the
three newlines in C, but the string/line above the break would be painful unless i
kept a linked list of linenumbers. too much like work:-)
gary
> --
> Matthew Anthony Kolybabi (Mak)
> <mak@kolybabi.com>
>
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--
Gary Kline kline@thought.org http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix
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