Question

I have a large text file I would like to put on my ebook-reader, but the formatting becomes all wrong because all lines are hard wrapped at or before column 80 with CR/LF, and paragraphs/headers are not marked differently, only a single CR/LF there too.

What I would like is to replace all CR/LF’s after column 75 with a space. That would make most paragraphs continuous. (Not a perfect solution, but a lot better to read.)

Is it possible to do this with a regex? Preferably a (linux) perl or sed oneliner, alternatively a Notepad++ regex.

Answer 1

perl -p -e 's/\s+$//; $_ .= length() <= 75 ? qq{\n} : q{ }' book.txt

Perl’s -p option means: for each input line, process and print. The processing code is supplied with the -e option. In this case: remove trailing whitespace and then attach either a newline or a space, depending on line length.