somada141/replace_line_breaks_bash.md

## replace_line_breaks_bash.md

      
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              replace_line_breaks_bash.md
            
          
    By piping input, e.g., cat <some_file>, to the following command one can replace all line breaks with spaces
sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/ /g'

This will read the whole input, e.g., file, in a loop and then replace the newline(s) with a space.
Explanation:

create a label via :a
append the current and next line to the pattern space via N
if we are before the last line, branch to the created label $!ba ($! means not to do it on the last line (as there should be one final newline)).
finally the substitution replaces every newline with a space on the pattern space (which is the whole file).

source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1251999/sed-how-can-i-replace-a-newline-n