remove blank lines from a file

saccskiz · #1 03-04-04, 13:28

i have a data file (.dat) that has 10000 lines out of which 8 lines are blank. what is the command to remove these blank lines from the file?
Thanks

aigles · #2 03-04-04, 14:15

Code:

# Remove empty lines 
sed '/^$/d' input_file

# Remove empty or blank lines (two methods)
sed '/^[[:spaces:]]$/' input_line
awk 'NF>0' input_line

saccskiz · #3 03-04-04, 14:22

Thank you very much. It worked.

Can you also guide me how to find out the total number of
blank or empty lines in an input file ? Thanks

aigles · #4 03-04-04, 14:28

Code:

awk 'NF>0 {count++} END { print count}' input_line

saccskiz · #5 03-04-04, 15:05

you are awesome, thanks

Damian Ibbotson · #6 03-05-04, 05:57

Quote:

Originally posted by aigles

Code:

awk 'NF>0 {count++} END { print count}' input_line

The above would count the number of non-blank lines. To count the number of blank lines, subtract from the record count.

Code:

awk 'NF>0 {count++} END { print NR-count}' yourFile

Another way would be to use grep -c.

Code:

grep -c "^[ \t]*$" yourFile

Damian

aigles · #7 03-05-04, 06:04

Oops .... Good shooting Damian !

aigles · #8 03-05-04, 08:13

I forgot to give the correction :

Code:

awk 'NF==0 {count++} END { print count}' input_line