How can I replace each newline (\n) with a space using sed?

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You can use the sed command to replace each newline (\n) character with a space. The sed command allows you to perform text transformations on an input stream (e.g., a file or pipeline). Here's how you can do it:

sh
sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/ /g'

Let's break down the command and provide an example:

  1. :a;N;$!ba;: This part of the command sets up a loop that reads all lines of input into the pattern space. It effectively joins all lines together.

  2. s/\n/ /g: This part of the command uses the s command to substitute all occurrences of \n (newline) with a space. The g flag at the end of the s command ensures that all occurrences are replaced, not just the first one.

Here's an example of using the sed command to replace newlines with spaces in a text file named input.txt:

Suppose the contents of input.txt are as follows:

sql
Hello,
World!
How are
you?

You can run the following command to replace newlines with spaces:

sh
sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/ /g' input.txt

The output will be:

sql
Hello, World! How are you?

This example demonstrates how to use the sed command to replace newlines with spaces in a text file.

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