Conditional newline removal: I have a requirement as follow: To remove the newline characters for a fixed width length file of 20 chars. for example: cat 1.txt 1234567890 1234567890 09876543210987654321 the output should be: 12345678901234567890 09876543210987654321 The first line should join the second line due to it not reaches the width of 20 chars. After it reaches 20 chars, it should be a new line. The idea is to remove the newline char when in between text. Any solution? Thanks in advance

A partial reply... This will remove the NL character. sed 'N;s/\n//' datafile therefore 1234567890 1234567890 becomes 12345678901234567890 This will print lines of less than 21 chars and simply ignores those lines that are longer: sed -n '/^.\{21\}/!p'

Thanks for the partial reply though it may not be a final one... i got your idea but it seems it is really hard to combine the two sed command to get it done in one step, isn't it? I had been thinking for a long time also... anyways, thanks for the partial solution, appreciate that!

Hi, use the below command to remove new line character in the text file sed 'N:s/\n//g' <file.txt>

thanks alot!