Command to remove \n from Windows file but preserve \r \n

[sedmeades]

I know virtually no unix BUT
I want to remove line feed \n from a file but only when NOT preceded by carriage return \r - this is a file copied from windows. Our Oracle data load script needs to read the next record after \r \n but ignore \n embedded in text

Steve Edmeades

[lugoteehalt]

I know virtually no unix BUT
I want to remove line feed \n from a file but only when NOT preceded by carriage return \r - this is a file copied from windows. Our Oracle data load script needs to read the next record after \r \n but ignore \n embedded in text

Steve Edmeades

This is probably to ridiculously misunderstand the problem but:

$ cat|sed 's/\\n//g'|sed 's/\\r/\\r\\n/g'
The wholesome bread\r\n
Of Mrs. Brag\n
Fell to the ground\r\n
As if twere dead\n
The wholesome bread\r\n
Of Mrs. Brag
Fell to the ground\r\n
As if twere dead

cat just sends the four lines below through the pipe. The first sed removes the \n's and the second looks for \r and adds an \n to it.

Discovered that grep \\\\ looks for \ - it's true.

[sedmeades]

Thanks lugoteehalt, appreciate your help - I think you have grasped the issue. How do I do that operation on files - ie Take MYfile1 process it in the way you say and end up with a cleaned up file MYfile2. This would be a line I could include in a shell script.
Thanks again
Steve Edmeades - Cancer Research UK

[lugoteehalt]

sed 's/\\n//g' < MYfile1 | sed 's/\\r/\\r\\n/g' > MYfile2

It has to actually have the characters \r and \n, you know - as written to work.

It won't do anything to:

The chief defect
Of Henry King

It has to be:

The chief defect\n and stuff like that.

#! /bin/bash
# Remove \n's but not \r\n's.

MYfile1=$1
sed 's/\\n//g' < "$MYfile1" | sed 's/\\r/\\r\\n/g' > MYfile2

Seems to work. You'd run that with:

$ bash progName.sh /path/to/MYfile1 or something.

[sedmeades]

Thanks for giving me some more of your time on this,
that did not quite work in my scenario, but after playing around a bit this did seem to do the trick:-
cat file1 | tr -d '\n' | sed 's/\r/\r\n/g' > file2

[lugoteehalt]

You sure?

lugo@debian:~/Videos/Medicine$ echo "\r"|sed 's/\r/\r\n/g'
\r
lugo@debian:~/Videos/Medicine$ echo "\r"|sed 's/\\r/\\r\\n/g'
\r\n
lugo@debian:~/Videos/Medicine$

tr's nice, had never heard of it.