sed script to combine blank lines?

[Allyn Fratkin]

you sed experts are going way overboard here.  this is a really
trivial problem for sed.  try something simple, like the following:

sed 's/^[<sp><tab><ff>]*//; /^$/N; /^\n[<sp><tab><ff>]*$/D'

this starts by reducing a "blank" line to an empty one.  an empty
line is joined to the next line, and then if this next line is also
"blank", the first line is deleted.

i admit that this does require non-printable chars.  too bad sed
doesn't understand octal escape sequences.

to get around the non-printable chars, you could always do something
like this:

chars=`echo '\040\011\014\c'`	# use -n with bsd echo
sed "s/^[$chars]*//; /^$/N; /^\n[$chars]*$/D"

-- 
 From the virtual mind of Allyn Fratkin            allyn at sdd.hp.com
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