# remove horizontal asterisks s@\*\*@@g # preserve double hyphens between words in GNU GPL s@\([^\-]\)\-\-\([^\-]\)@\1SDFGHdbldash\2@g # remove horizontal hyphens s@\-\-@@g # reintroduce double hyphens s@SDFGHdbldash@--@g # remove trailing asterisk s@[ ]*\*[ ]*$@@g # remove leading asterisk s@^[ ]*\*@@ # remove lonely slash s@^/$@@g # remove leading whitespace s@^[ ]*@@g # preserve bullets s@^o @ oSDFGHbullet @g # preserve sentence spacing s@\. \([A-Za-z0-9]\)@.SDFGHJdblspace\1@g # remove first line 1d # read entire input and preserve paragraph separation s@^$@ SDFGHJdblnewline @