Utility for de-wrapping text files?

Gullible Jones · 2011-07-02 19:15:04

I have a bunch of text documents that I converted from doc format using wv. They all converted fine, but they're now word-wrapped to 80 spaces, making them difficult to edit in a text editor (especially if I want to use "virtual" word wrapping).

Is there any utility that will let me remove the wrapping, without removing *all* line break characters - i.e. still keeping the spacing between paragraphs?

Edit: duh, it just struck me that I could do this with sed. Unfortunately I am not a regex wizard. How could I tell sed to remove all line breaks, *except* for line breaks followed by or following another line break? E.g.

foo.\nBar baz --> line break is removed
foo.\n\nBar baz --> both line breaks are kept

Last edited by Gullible Jones (2011-07-02 19:19:07)

falconindy · 2011-07-02 19:24:17

A naive usage of awk might do the trick...

awk 'NF > 0 { printf "%s",$0; next } { printf "\n\n" }' file > newfile

Gullible Jones · 2011-07-02 19:54:00

Hmm, that mostly works... Thanks. Also, how could I reduce the amount of whitespace? e.g. some words are separated by two or more spaces, how can I reduce any chain of spaces to only one space?

karol · 2011-07-02 20:01:32

Gullible Jones wrote:

Hmm, that mostly works... Thanks. Also, how could I reduce the amount of whitespace? e.g. some words are separated by two or more spaces, how can I reduce any chain of spaces to only one space?

Have you tried

tr -s ' '

?

Gullible Jones · 2011-07-02 20:23:01

Ah, thanks! I didn't even know that command existed.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-07-02 19:15:04

Utility for de-wrapping text files?

#2 2011-07-02 19:24:17

Re: Utility for de-wrapping text files?

#3 2011-07-02 19:54:00

Re: Utility for de-wrapping text files?

#4 2011-07-02 20:01:32

Re: Utility for de-wrapping text files?

#5 2011-07-02 20:23:01

Re: Utility for de-wrapping text files?

Board footer