Re: Data file with records that span two lines

[John W. Krahn]

Perl Noob wrote:
I have a data file with thousands of records.  The problem is that the
records in the data file span two lines for each record.  I want to
write a perl script that makes each record a single line.  The file
looks like this:
RECORD1FIELD1  RECORD1FIELD2     RECORD1FIELD3  RECORD1FIELD3
          RECORD1FIELD4          RECORD1FIELD5

RECORD2FIELD1  RECORD2FIELD2     RECORD2FIELD3  RECORD2FIELD3
          RECORD2FIELD4          RECORD2FIELD5

 . . .

What I want is this:

RECORD1FIELD1  . . .RECORD1FIELD5
RECORD2FIELD1  . . .RECORD2FIELD5


The second line of each record actually has a bunch of spaces before
the first field.  I thought I could exploit this with:

s/\n                                //gi;

what I thought would happen is the script would look for a new line
followed by a bunch of empty spaces and delete only those.  But that
didn't work.

Using a hex editor I saw that each new line was 0D 0A. I then tried:

s/\x0D\x0A//gi;

that didn't work either.

I just want to move the second line of each record to the end of the
first.  It seems so simple, but I am exhausted of trying different
things.

$ echo "RECORD1FIELD1  RECORD1FIELD2     RECORD1FIELD3  RECORD1FIELD3
          RECORD1FIELD4          RECORD1FIELD5
RECORD2FIELD1  RECORD2FIELD2     RECORD2FIELD3  RECORD2FIELD3
          RECORD2FIELD4          RECORD2FIELD5" | perl -e'
while ( <> ) {
    chomp;
    print;
    print "\n" if /^\s/;
    }
'
RECORD1FIELD1  RECORD1FIELD2     RECORD1FIELD3  RECORD1FIELD3 
RECORD1FIELD4          RECORD1FIELD5
RECORD2FIELD1  RECORD2FIELD2     RECORD2FIELD3  RECORD2FIELD3 
RECORD2FIELD4          RECORD2FIELD5




John
--
The programmer is fighting against the two most
destructive forces in the universe: entropy and
human stupidity.               -- Damian Conway

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