Comments on: removing blank newlines using sed. http://www.thefraggle.com/2008/02/17/removing-blank-newlines-using-sed/ technology, photography and anything else that springs to mind. Sat, 05 Mar 2011 15:59:33 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.4 By: leE http://www.thefraggle.com/2008/02/17/removing-blank-newlines-using-sed/comment-page-1/#comment-6300 leE Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:32:03 +0000 http://www.thefraggle.com/2008/02/17/removing-blank-newlines-using-sed/#comment-6300 It's actually faster to do this: tr -d '\n' Quick demo for you: $ time (cat *.txt | sed -e '/^$/d' >> /dev/null) real 0m0.016s user 0m0.018s sys 0m0.001s $ time (cat *.txt | sed -e '/^$/d' >> /dev/null) real 0m0.016s user 0m0.018s sys 0m0.001s $ time (cat *.txt | tr -d '\n' >> /dev/null) real 0m0.010s user 0m0.011s sys 0m0.001s $ time (cat *.txt | tr -d '\n' >> /dev/null) real 0m0.009s user 0m0.011s sys 0m0.001s It should also leave a smaller memory footprint: $ ls -lah `which tr` -r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 18K May 10 11:53 /usr/bin/tr $ ls -lah `which sed` -r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 33K May 10 11:53 /usr/bin/sed Every byte counts ;) It’s actually faster to do this:

tr -d ‘\n’

Quick demo for you:

$ time (cat *.txt | sed -e ‘/^$/d’ >> /dev/null)

real 0m0.016s
user 0m0.018s
sys 0m0.001s

$ time (cat *.txt | sed -e ‘/^$/d’ >> /dev/null)

real 0m0.016s
user 0m0.018s
sys 0m0.001s

$ time (cat *.txt | tr -d ‘\n’ >> /dev/null)

real 0m0.010s
user 0m0.011s
sys 0m0.001s

$ time (cat *.txt | tr -d ‘\n’ >> /dev/null)

real 0m0.009s
user 0m0.011s
sys 0m0.001s

It should also leave a smaller memory footprint:

$ ls -lah `which tr`
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 18K May 10 11:53 /usr/bin/tr
$ ls -lah `which sed`
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 33K May 10 11:53 /usr/bin/sed

Every byte counts ;)

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