DEBLANK
Remove blank lines from a file

DEBLANK is a C++ program which makes a copy of a text file in which all blank lines have been removed.

A blank line contains no characters, or else nothing but blank characters.

If the final line of the input file isn't blank, but does not terminate with a NEWLINE character, the corresponding line in the output file will have a terminating NEWLINE appended to it. A previous version of this program would instead inadvertently omit this final line from the output file.

Usage:

deblank old new

• old is the name of the old file;
• new is the name of the new file, to be created from the nonblank lines of old.

Licensing:

The computer code and data files described and made available on this web page are distributed under the GNU LGPL license.

Languages:

DEBLANK is available in a C++ version.

Related Data and Programs:

CR2LF, a C++ program which reads a text file and replaces carriage returns by line feeds.

CRRM, a C++ program which reads a text file and writes a copy which has no carriage returns.

DECOMMENT, a C++ program which makes a copy of a text file which contains no "comment" lines (that begin with "#").

DETROFF, a C++ program which removes from a file every occurrence of the TROFF overprint pair character+backspace, which can make a MAN page printable;

FILUM, a C++ library which performs various operations on files.

REFORMAT, a FORTRAN90 program which reads a text file that contains only real values, and writes a copy which has a fixed number of real values on each line.

REWORD, a C++ program which reads a text file and writes a copy which has a fixed number of "words" per line.

UNCONTROL, a C++ program which makes a copy of a text file which contains no control characters.

WRAP, a C++ program which makes a copy of a text file in which no line is longer than a user-specified wrap length.

WRAP2, a C++ program which wraps long lines in a text file, but which wraps some lines "early", so as to avoid breaking words.

Source Code:

• deblank.cpp, the source code;
• deblank.sh, commands to compile and link the code;

Examples and Tests:

• old.txt, a file with many blank lines;
• new.txt, a copy of the file, with no blank lines;

List of Routines:

• MAIN is the main program for DEBLANK.
• HANDLE handles a single file.
• S_LEN_TRIM returns the length of a string to the last nonblank.
• TIMESTAMP prints the current YMDHMS date as a time stamp.

You can go up one level to the C++ source codes.