How to remove new line characters from data rows

Question

I have a file as below

Emp1|FirstName|MiddleName|LastName|Address|Pincode|PhoneNumber
1234|FirstName1|MiddleName2|LastName3| Add1 || ADD2|123|000000000
2345|FirstName2|MiddleName3|LastName4|
Add1 || ADD2|
 234|000000000

OUTPUT:

Emp1|FirstName|MiddleName|LastName|Address|Pincode|PhoneNumber
1234|FirstName1|MiddleName2|LastName3| Add1 || ADD2|123|000000000
2345|FirstName2|MiddleName3|LastName4| Add1 || ADD2|234|000000000

Answer 1

The problem here is not so much How to remove new line characters , but when to remove them. Fortunately, the lines which need to be joined with the following line can be determined by the trailing | . An appropriate sed command is:

sed ':0;/|$/{N;s/\n//;b0}'

• :0 - label at beginning of script
• /|$/ - address lines ending with |
• N - append next line of input
• s/\n// - delete the embedded newline
• b0 - branch to beginning of script (to join more lines)