Joining lines into a single line in TextEdit

Question

In a text document, how do I join several lines into a single line? I want each paragraph to be on a single line, but keep the lines between the paragraphs.

Here is an example. I want to convert this text

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer
adipiscing elit. Ut purus elit, vestibulum ut, placerat ac,
adipiscing vitae, felis.

Curabitur dictum gravida mauris. Nam arcu
libero, nonummy eget, consectetuer id, vulputate a, magna. Donec
vehicula augue eu neque.

to this text

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ut purus elit, vestibulum ut, placerat ac, adipiscing vitae, felis.

Curabitur dictum gravida mauris. Nam arcu libero, nonummy eget, consectetuer id, vulputate a, magna. Donec vehicula augue eu neque.

I know how to do it in vim or fmt, but can I do it in TextEdit and in the builtin text boxes? I don't want to manually have to do ^D<space> at the end of each line.

Answer 1

If your paragraphs are separated by a blank line, you can do this with a two-part Find and Replace in TextEdit.

1. Open the Find and Replace dialog (⌥⌘F).
2. In the Find field, insert the newline character by typing option-return.
3. In the Replace field, insert a space, then click All. This replaces all newlines with a space, so you'll have one long line of all your text.
4. Change the Find field to two spaces.
5. In the Replace field, enter two newline characters (option-return twice).
6. Click All to move paragraphs to a new line.

Answer 2

I find this works best in three steps, particularly if there's some character or combination of characters not used in your document. Let's assume for a moment that •%• doesn't happen to come up in your document. If it does, pick a different arbitrary short string.

• Use the Find and Replace dialog to replace all double newlines (⌥return ⌥return) with your arbitrary text string; replace all.

• Find and Replace all newlines (⌥return) with a space (space).

• Find and Replace all instances of your arbitrary text string with a double newline.

Answer 3

You could create a service like this:

With AppleScript you'd have to use the clipboard:

try
    set old to the clipboard as record
end try
try
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "c" using command down
    delay 0.1
    do shell script "export LC_CTYPE=UTF-8; pbpaste | fmt -w 99999 | pbcopy"
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "v" using command down
    delay 0.1
end try
try
    set the clipboard to old
end try

I have also written a script like TextMate's filter through command (run shell script.scpt at http://lri.me/applescript.html).

Answer 4

Just run this workflow. This worked for me:

Ask for Finder items

Open Finder Items (using TextEdit)

Wait for Finder Items

Get Contents of Text Edit Document

Remove Empty Paragraphs

Get Paragraphs of Text

Combine Text String (Select Insert Delimiter Between Combined strings, then put one space in that field)

New Text File

That should work. Let me know if it does.