Very Computer

Hi

I would like to convert a list, such as:

item1
item2
item3
...
itemN

Into this:

item1 item2 item3 ... itemN
(please note there is a white space between the strings)

I am currently doing the conversion using ^J in vi, but I'm sure there is an
easier and quicker way to do it say in sed/awk/ksh ?

Any ideas?

Cheers.

Jon Tsu

Bourne shell or compatible:-

while read line ;do echo "$line \c"; done < inputfile > outputfile

Note: depending on your shell you may need 'echo -e' (eg bash).  Also, you
may want to finish with another echo to add a newline, and also there will
be a trailing space which may or may not be important enough to do
something with.

Or:-

awk '{printf "%s ", $0}' < inputfile > outputfile

HTH,
Adrian.

--
Adrian Ball                       \\  Tel: 07050 688565
Major Data Services Ltd            \\  Fax: 07020 965488

http://www.majords.co.uk/

Quote:> > I would like to convert a list, such as:

> > item1
> > item2
> > item3
> > ...
> > itemN

> > Into this:

> > item1 item2 item3 ... itemN
> > (please note there is a white space between the strings)

Assuming the list is in a file named 'thefile', easiest way is:

  items=`cat thefile`

Backticks automatically convert any whitespace to single spaces.

To write the data back out to a second file 'somefile':

  echo "$items" >somefile

-Ian

$ cat > list
item1
item2
item3
item4
item5
$ tr '[\n]' '[ ]'  < list > list2
$ more list2
item1 item2 item3 item4 item5
$

Lee.

What is the source of the list? A file? A variable? Command output?

Whichever it is, there are many ways of doing it (not to mention UUOC).

A file:
        echo `cat FILE`
        tr "\n" " " < FILE

A variable:
        echo $VAR

Command output:
        echo `command`

--
    Chris F.A. Johnson                        http://cfaj.freeshell.org
    ===================================================================
    My code (if any) in this post is copyright 2001, Chris F.A. Johnson
    and may be copied under the terms of the GNU General Public License

An alternative would be the paste command with the -s option (to paste all
subsequent lines into one) and the -d option to specify the space as the
delimiter.

A couple of examples:

$ paste -sd' ' filename

$ command_that_generates_list | paste -sd' ' -
(the - at the end of the above example tells paste to take its input from standard
input instead of a file)

Regards,
Gary

Quote:>> > I would like to convert a list, such as:

>> > item1
>> > item2
>> > item3
>> > ...
>> > itemN

>> > Into this:

>> > item1 item2 item3 ... itemN
>> > (please note there is a white space between the strings)

>Assuming the list is in a file named 'thefile', easiest way is:

>  items=`cat thefile`

>Backticks automatically convert any whitespace to single spaces.

>To write the data back out to a second file 'somefile':

>  echo "$items" >somefile

This works fine as long as the file is not larger than the limit
on the comandline length.

Some versions of tr -d "
" infile >outfile

can do it nicely (the line break is intended!)
(tested with gnu tr and solaris' tr)

juergen
--

If it is used for shell programming, another good ways is to use
xargs:

cat listfile | xargs echo

and echo can be any command you want.

--
Tong (remove underscore(s) to reply)
  *niX Power Tools Project: http://xpt.sourceforge.net/
  - All free contribution & collection

while read item;do
  list="$list $item"
done < datafile

You could try using ....

awk '{printf $0 " "}' filename

I am sure there is probably a way to shorten it up or even to use sed to
substitute a space or tab for a return but this is the first thing that
came to mind.

--
Cheers,
Ted J. Loeffelholz
Senior Design Engineer
Caterpillar Inc

Quote:> > I would like to convert a list, such as:

> > item1
> > item2
> > item3
> > ...
> > itemN

> > Into this:

> > item1 item2 item3 ... itemN

If the list is going to be reasonably short then try piping it into
'xargs echo', which will also do with multi/leading/trailing blanks
exactly what you'd like it to do.

Alexis

tr   '\n' ' ' < infile > outfile
print >> outfile

cheers
Roger D

If this vertical list of words is stored in a file, then you can
assign them to a variable using: wordlist=`xargs <file`

If this vertical list of words is stored in a variable, then you
can assign them to a variable using: wordlist=`echo $var`

Verify the outcome using: echo "$wordlist"
--
John Savage  (one month late in responding, but bash probably hasn't changed)