Bash: Add Linebreak after character in text

[Jordan]

I use this little script for EDI parsing. It will add a linebreak after a character it finds.

#!/bin/sh -vx

# Script to add line breaks after the delimiter of an EDI file.
# Paramters:    filename    input file (edi data file)
#               output      file to be written
#               delimiter   ending delimiter of EDI file (\, *, ~, etc)
############################################################################

# Variables
filename=$1
output=$2
delim=$3
replace='s/'$delim'/\n/g'

cat $1 | tr -d "\n" > $output.br4
cat $output.br4 | sed -e $replace > $output

Usage:

# linebreak.sh <filename> <output filename> <delimiter>

Text Sample:

v1,v2*v3,v4*v5,v46*

Example:

# linbreak.sh /example.txt /example_parsed.txt \*

Note: You have to escape special characters

Output:

v1,v2*
v3,v4*
v5,v46*

[John]

How many languages did you write this EDI parser in?

[Jordan]

This isn't an EDI parser but a customized program for an ERP program we have. It was unable to handle reading text files without linebreaks.