How to remove repeated characters or symbols in a string
some text\n\n\n some other text\n\n more text\n
How can I make something like this using sed or another command?
some text\n some other text\n more text\n
I can remove \n like sed s/\n//g but this will remove all the characters.
You can use
sed '/^$/d' file > newfile
In GNU sed, you can use inline replacement with -i option:
sed -i '/^$/d' file
In MacOS, FreeBSD sed inline replacement can be done with
sed -i '' '/^$/d' file
sed -i.bak '/^$/d' file
See the online demo:
#!/bin/bash
s=$(echo -e "some text\n\n\n some other text\n\n more text\n")
sed '/^$/d' <<< "$s"
Output:
some text
some other text
more text
You can also use tr if it supports squeezings.
$ echo -e 'ab\n\ncd' | tr --squeeze-repeats '\n'
ab
cd
Given the following [input] or a file that is similar:
printf "some text\n\n\n some other text\n\n more text\n" | [ one of the pipes below... ]
Any of these work:
[input] | sed -n '/[^[:space:]]/p'
Or:
[input] | sed '/^$/d'
Or, if you want to filter ^[spaces or tabs]\n also:
[input] | sed '/^[[:blank:]]*$/d'
Or with awk:
[input] | awk 'NF'