novice sed ?

[Rouben Rostamian]

In article <1991May3.213550.17246 at ge-dab.GE.COM> brooks at sundance7.dab.ge.com (Stephen Brooks) writes:
>  I have a sed question for you gurus: assume I have a file of the form
>
>name1; A1.1 B10.20 C100.300,
>       D101.25 E202.50,
>       F300.7
>name2; Z44.33 Y409.45
>name3; X777.77 W6.6,
>       V32.15
>
>where a comma (,) represents a continuation character.  I need to "massage"
>this into something which looks like this:
>
>name1; A1.1 B10.20 C100.300 D101.25 E202.50 F300.7
>name2; Z44.33 Y409.45
>name3; X777.77 W6.6 V32.15
>
>Can I do this in sed? 

Yes.  Here it is:

sed -n '
:loop
/,$/{N
bloop
}
s/,\n//g
s/  */ /g
p'  <inputfile

--
Rouben Rostamian                          Telephone: (301) 455-2458
Department of Mathematics and Statistics  e-mail:
University of Maryland Baltimore County   bitnet: rostamian at umbc.bitnet
Baltimore, MD 21228,  U.S.A.              internet: rouben at math9.math.umbc.edu