CODEWITHSUNDEEP
sedmultilinereplace
user294280
user294280

Reputation: 361

Sed multiline replacement question

I am having a sed replacement issue and am hoping one of you will be able to help me. I am sure I am missing something simple.

So I have a file containing text and a quote. The quote itself could be on one line or span multiple lines. I want the quote on a new line by itself. As an example here is an example of the file 

And he said "This too
   shall pass"

I need to change this to 

And he said 
"This too shall pass"

I tried the following sed but it didn't work -- it seems to match alright but failed to get a new line

/"This/ {
    N
    s/"This *\n*too *\n*shall *\n*pass"/\n"This too shall pass"/
}

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2913

Answers (3)

clt60
clt60

Reputation: 63974

perl -0777 -ne 's/\s+/ /g;s/"/\n"/;print "$_\n"'

Upvotes: 2

Fredrik Pihl
Fredrik Pihl

Reputation: 45670

First join all lines, then insert a newline for the first " and then a pass through tr to single space everything (not that happy with the tr part...)

$ sed -e :a -e '$!N; s/\n/ /; ta ; s/"/\n"/' multiline_input | tr -s " "
And he said 
"This too shall pass"

Upvotes: 2

Sai
Sai

Reputation: 3967

Try replacing the "\n" with \ and an explicit new line; like the following -- 

/"This/ {
N
s/"This *\n*too *\n*shall *\n*pass"/\
"This too shall pass"/
}

Upvotes: 3

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