I want to merge changes from two strings files into one with awk but it is deleting empty lines which are used in my files for better readability.
awk -F= '!a[$1]++' 1.strings 2.strings > results.strings
My files looks like:
"cart.title" = "Cart";
"cart.subtitle" = "Price";
"checkout.title" = "Checkout";
But my output is:
"cart.title" = "Cart";
"cart.subtitle" = "Price";
"checkout.title" = "Checkout";
But I want to keep that newline before checkout.
Your script isn't removing newlines, it's removing some empty (possibly including lines of all spaces) lines. Given input like this:
$ printf 'foo\n\nbar\n'
foo
bar
this script will remove newlines (not your case):
$ printf 'foo\n\nbar\n' | awk -v ORS= '1'
foobar$
while this script will remove empty lines (your case):
$ printf 'foo\n\nbar\n' | awk 'NF'
foo
bar
Your script will only remove an empty line if there was another empty line before it, e.g. if the first input line was empty, as it only prints lines with unique $1 values across ALL lines, empty or not. To keep all empty lines use:
$ awk -F= '!NF || !a[$1]++' file
"cart.title" = "Cart";
"cart.subtitle" = "Price";
"checkout.title" = "Checkout";