Delete newline in Vim

Question

Is there a way to delete the newline at the end of a line in Vim, so that the next line is appended to the current line?

For example:

Evaluator<T>():
    _bestPos(){
}

I'd like to put this all on one line without copying lines and pasting them into the previous one. It seems like I should be able to put my cursor to the end of each line, press a key, and have the next line jump onto the same one the cursor is on.

End result:

Evaluator<T>(): _bestPos(){ }

Is this possible in Vim?

Answer 1

Certainly. Vim recognizes the \n character as a newline, so you can just search and replace. In command mode type:

:%s/\n/

Answer 2

It probably depends on your settings, but I usually do this with A<delete>

Where A is append at the end of the line. It probably requires nocompatible mode :)

Answer 3

I would just press A (append to end of line, puts you into insert mode) on the line where you want to remove the newline and then press delete.

Answer 4

While on the upper line in normal mode, hit shift+j.

You can prepend a count too, so 3J on the top line would join all those lines together.

Answer 5

If you are on the first line, pressing J will join that line and the next line together, removing the newline. You can also combine this with a count, so pressing 3J will combine all 3 lines together.

Answer 6

if you don't mind using other shell tools,

tr -d "\n" < file >t && mv -f t file

sed -i.bak -e :a -e 'N;s/\n//;ba' file

awk '{printf "%s",$0 }' file >t && mv -f t file