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up vote 1 down vote favorite

I have had a requirement where I need to move data to a new line based on a text:

Input
:61: 456 B66666 :61: 878 N78777 :61: 534533534 BNNN

Output
:61: 456 B66666
:61: 878 N78777
:61: 534533534 BNNN

So basically as soon as it encounters :61: it should move to a new line.

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2 Answers 2

up vote 3 down vote

Here is a very simple solution which works perfectly on your example:

sed 's/ :61:/\n:61:/g' < input_file

You may have to adapt it a little, especially if you don't always have a space before :61: in your input files.

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up vote 2 down vote

Similar to @lgeorget's answer, this adds a newline before any ":61:" that is not at the beginning of the line:

perl -pe 's/(?<!^)(?=:61:)/\n/g' file
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2  
(?<!^) is a negative look-behind assertion: the current location does not immediately follow the start of the line. (?=:61:) is a positive look-ahead assertion: the current location is immediately followed by the string ":61:". If both of those are true, replace this (zero-width) string with a newline. –  glenn jackman Oct 22 '14 at 18:29

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