Convert unwrapped paragraphs to hard wrapped paragraphs when there's no blank lines.

[Linux for blind general discussion]

The following assumes a newline at the end of each paragraph.

The PERL script below will put a blank line after each unwrapped paragraph, which in text is
just one long line terminated with a newline.
Put the perl script in your ~/bin/ directory in a file named doublespace and chmod it to 755. 

Next, the following command will break an unwrapped paragraph into 75 character lines:
fold -sbw 75 <file>

Now put the two together:

cat $1 | doublespace  | fold -sbw 75 

Put the above command into ~/bin/dscat, chmod it to 755 
and you can do:
dscat unwrapped_file > double_spaced_file

Now here's the perl script:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl

# Double space the standard input. Expects a text file.
while(<STDIN>)
{
chomp $_;
if ($_ eq "" or $_ =~ /^  *$/)
{
print "\n";
}
else
{
print "$_

";
}
}



On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 02:27:02PM -0500, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
> On March 27, 2020, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
> > does anyone know a way to automate inserting blank lines before
> > and after each line in a file that's too long to fit on the screen
> > all at once and then hard wrap those long lines?
> 
> Well, since adding a blank line after each line-break puts a blank
> line before the next line, you (should?) only need to add newlines
> after each line which can easily be done with sed:
> 
>   $ sed G input_file.txt > output_file_with_spaces.txt
> 
> If you want to format the lines at the same time, you can do that
> with "fmt"
> 
>   $ sed G input.txt | fmt > formatted_output_with_spaces.txt
> 
> By default, fmt formats to 72 characters wide but you can adjust that
> using
> 
>   fmt -80
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
> -tim
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Rudy Vener
Website: http://www.rudyvener.com