[SOLVED] Converting a list of strings into a single line with sed/awk on linux

Issue

I have a file say test.txt, which contains data as a list of values/strings and also has some empty lines in between as shown below

Val1  
Val2  
Val3

Val4  
Val5         
         
     
    
Val6

Required output:

Val1, Val2, Val3  
Val4, Val5  
Val6

I am using the below command, but it's returning all the available values in a single line. But I want only consecutive values to be concatenated together(comma separated) and a new line should start whenever it hits an empty line (there can be more than one consecutive empty line).

cat test.txt | sed 's/<[^>]*>//g' | sed 's/ //g' | sed 's/.*/&/;$!s/$/, /' | tr -d '\n'

Solution

I think this is what you're trying to do, using any awk:

$ awk -v RS= -F'\n' -v OFS=', ' '{$1=$1} 1' test.txt
Val1, Val2, Val3
Val4, Val5
Val6

Answered By - Ed Morton

Answer Checked By - Cary Denson (WPSolving Admin)