Very Computer

by **Roy Smit** » Mon, 08 Jan 2001 05:32:43

What's the simpliest way to strip the blank lines from the top and bottom of
a file in a shell script, but not touch blank lines in the middle? It
*seems* like the kind of thing which should be a one-liner in sed.

by **Tim Heane** » Mon, 08 Jan 2001 11:19:49

> What's the simpliest way to strip the blank lines from the top and bottom of
> a file in a shell script, but not touch blank lines in the middle? It
> *seems* like the kind of thing which should be a one-liner in sed.

Here's one way to do it with Perl

perl -0 -e '$_=<>;s/^\n+//;s/\n+$/\n/;print;' < infile > outfile

Tim

Very Computer

Stripping blank lines from top and bottom of file.

Stripping blank lines from top and bottom of file.

Stripping blank lines from top and bottom of file.