Deleting (Only) First Blank Line in File

[Thomas Omerzu]

In article <819 at ehviea.ine.philips.nl> leo at ehviea.UUCP (Leo de Wit) writes:

>In article <1651 at fallst.UUCP> tkevans at fallst.UUCP (Tim Evans) writes:
>|Can someone help me to delete the _first_ occurring blank line of a file
>|(whereever it occurs) without deleting subsequent ones?
>|
>|You'd think the following would work, but it doesn't:
>|
>|	sed 's/^$//1' foo > newfoo
>
>Sure. It isn't valid sed syntax.


NO! It is valid sed syntax.

The reason, that this does not work as supposed is different:
the pattern  /^$/  matches  any empty line.
On the first occurency (indicated by '1'), this emptiness is replaced
by //, i.e. nothing, and the line is  p r i n t e d.
And this is the actual problem: /^$/ does  n o t  include the '\n',
which ist created by printing the empty line.


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