sed'ing out newlines

[nullpointer at pobox.com (Dan Barrett)]

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On Monday 15 December 2003 12:56, nmeyers at javalinux.net wrote:
> Is that all you want to do, or are you doing something else in your sed
> script? I ask because I think it'll be expensive and slow (I haven't
> used sed in awhile, but I think you'll end up having to load the entire
> file into its memory). The "tr" utility can remove newlines much more
> efficiently:


I'm trying to assemble a CLASSPATH variable by reading in a file and 
substituting out the newlines in favor of a colon and perhaps another 
variable.
In essence, I've just inherited a bunch of projects with sprawling directory 
structures (esp. third-party JARs scattered all over the place).  I want to 
be able to switch the value of CLASSPATH on the fly when moving from project 
to project, so I thought one way to do it would be to have a file for each 
project.  Each file would list directories or individual JARs to be included 
in the CLASSPATH; hence when trying out different third-party components I 
could just edit the relevant file.
Does this sound rational, or have I entered molehill -> mountain territory?
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