Deleting all blank lines in a file

[cdrdash]

Is there a simple way to delete all blank lines in a file with SlickEdit?

[hs2]

Yes - e.g. by simply search'n replace them using a regex like that:
'c/^[ \t]*\n//@rp*' on SE cmdline.

HS2

[Lee]

There is a ready-made command delete-blank-lines written for the Emacs emulation, but can be bound to a key in any emulation or used on the SlickEdit command-line any time.

[hs2]

Good to know - that's much more convenient. Hopefully I'll remember next time I need it.
Although the regex method is more flexible (omit hidden lines, limit to selection etc.)...
Thanks Lee,
HS2

[Lee]

Oops, just noticed the "all" in the Subject line.  delete-blank-lines only deletes all the blank lines from the current line.  It does not do the entire file, so the a regular expression search and replace is the right way to do the entire file.

[bogedo]

aware that an old topic is being dug up but this is still relevant all these years later. hs2's solution still works but it would be great if we had a built in function to delete all the blank lines in a file.

[Graeme]

If you expect to be able to reverse the operation in one step then it's not trivial unless you do it by saving a copy of the file before you do the delete.  I can't imagine anyone wanting to delete all the blank lines from a software source file  -  is that what you want this for or is it some other kind of file?

[Tim Kemp]

I've never needed to do it to a source code file, but I have done it regularly when I'm formatting data for a variety of things. Often the data ends up in a source code file.

[mwb1100]

A variation that I would use more often than deleting all blank lines is to "collapse" (or squeeze) blank lines (including those that have only whitespace characters) to a single blank line.  I'm pretty sure a regex to do this wouldn't qualify as simple.

Currently I use a simple bash function.  I guess I should figure out how to do this as a Slickedit macro:

Code: [Select]

squeeze ()
{
    sed 's/[ \t]*$//' "$1" | cat --squeeze-blank
}

[Dan]

From the SlickEdit command line, delete-search /^$/r would do it.  That's using SlickEdit regular expressions, convert to whatever kind you're the most comfortable with, allow for whitespace to be fancy if you wish.

https://youtu.be/P6WDBg4C2bY