Getting a text file rid of all superfluous blank lines

[Mike McCarty]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-12-05 at 02:09, Mike McCarty wrote:
> 
> 
>>>It's rarely worth the trouble to compile a specialized
>>>program for anything that can be done with regular
>>>expression since the native unix tools are so good
>>>at text manipulation.  If you can describe the problem
>>
>>For me, it's rarely worth the trouble to read the man
>>pages and try to figure out how the weird syntax of
>>sed works all over again, when in 5 minutes or so I can
>>have a specialized program working.
> 
> 
> I agree that the holding space notion is weird.  However

[snip]

My point (which perhaps got buried in the noise) is that
there are different strokes for different folks.

[snip]

> The free Cygwin tools bring all the useful parts to
> windows.  OSX sensibly already has them.  What else do
> you care about?  And why use a unix-like system if
> you don't want to take advantage of it's toolset?

I've used Cygwin for about one day, and took it back
off my machine. When I'm not using Linux, I normally
use DOS, not Windows. I found a couple of undesirable
interactions between Cygwin and Windows XP, and anyway,
as I said, I normally use DOS, not any version of Windows
when I'm not using Linux.

I don't use Linux because it has a "powerful toolset".
If I wanted that, I'd prefer DEC VMS, where the commands
at least make sense and have the same syntax everywhere.

>>whereas a little C
>>program (1) is simple to write, (2) has the same
>>syntax on all systems, and (3) is portable even to
>>my non-hosted environment on my little MC68HC11 machine
>>running no OS at all.
> 
> 
> Many OS's don't come with a C compiler, and even on the
> ones that do, the easiest way to do a lot of text transformations
> is to use the regular expression library routines.

Many machines don't come with an OS, but I can port my compiler
anywhere.

I don't do a lot of text transformations. In fact,
I hardly ever do text transformations. I can't recall the
last one I did (other than the little one-off I did for
the OP). Mostly, I read e-mail, and browse the web, and
edit source code for programs. I installed Linux on my
machine because I got a contract in October of 2004, and
was requested to use it by the guy who hired me.

OTOH, I've been using *NIX like systems since 1985 or so,
and am comfortable with the development environment.

But, as I said, different strokes for different folks.
I know quite a few people who have as their first reaction
to anything a script, others think awk always fits, and
others like perl.

Some prefer C, since it goes anywhere, even where *NIX systems
do not. Like very small embedded systems.

Mike
-- 
p="p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}
This message made from 100% recycled bits.
You have found the bank of Larn.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that!