Learning AWK Programming

Modifying line spacing in a file with AWK

In this section, we look at various one-liners used for modifying the spacing between lines in a file, using AWK.

• Double-space a file: In the following example, we first use the print statement with $0 to hold an entire line, followed by the second print statement to print nothing. In this, each print statement is followed by ORS, which prints a newline. Thus, each line gets double-spaced, as follows:

$ awk '{print $0 }{print ""}' label.dat

Or:

$ awk '{print}{print ""}' label.dat

Or:

$ awk '1{print}{print ""}' label.dat

Or:

$ awk '1;{print ""}' label.dat

Or:

$ awk '{print $0 "\n"}' label.dat

We can also double-space a file by setting the ORS variable value to 2 newlines instead of the default ...