Remover espaços em branco e comentários de arquivos no Linux

Introdução

Muitas vezes nos deparamos com um arquivo de configuração repleto de comentários, não que não sejam importantes mas para simplificar a leitura ou exemplificar algo, queremos apenas o que é necessário. Para isso podemos rodar o seguinte comando no bash que fará a mágica:

# cat <arquivo> |grep -v "#" |awk 'NF>0'

Um exemplo abaixo do resultado esperado:

Peguei um arquivo de exemplo o chrony.conf:

# Welcome to the chrony configuration file. See chrony.conf(5) for more
# information about usable directives.

# Include configuration files found in /etc/chrony/conf.d.
confdir /etc/chrony/conf.d

# Use Debian vendor zone.
#pool 2.debian.pool.ntp.org iburst
server a.st1.ntp.br iburst nts
server b.st1.ntp.br iburst nts
server c.st1.ntp.br iburst nts
server d.st1.ntp.br iburst nts

# Use time sources from DHCP.
sourcedir /run/chrony-dhcp

# Use NTP sources found in /etc/chrony/sources.d.
sourcedir /etc/chrony/sources.d

# This directive specify the location of the file containing ID/key pairs for
# NTP authentication.
keyfile /etc/chrony/chrony.keys

# This directive specify the file into which chronyd will store the rate
# information.
driftfile /var/lib/chrony/chrony.drift

# Save NTS keys and cookies.
ntsdumpdir /var/lib/chrony

# Uncomment the following line to turn logging on.
#log tracking measurements statistics

# Log files location.
logdir /var/log/chrony

# Stop bad estimates upsetting machine clock.
maxupdateskew 100.0

# This directive enables kernel synchronisation (every 11 minutes) of the
# real-time clock. Note that it can’t be used along with the 'rtcfile' directive.
rtcsync

# Step the system clock instead of slewing it if the adjustment is larger than
# one second, but only in the first three clock updates.
makestep 1 3

# Get TAI-UTC offset and leap seconds from the system tz database.
# This directive must be commented out when using time sources serving
# leap-smeared time.
leapsectz right/UTC

Agora rodando o comando abaixo, teremos o seguinte resultado:

cat chrony.conf |grep -v "#" |awk 'NF>0'

confdir /etc/chrony/conf.d
server a.st1.ntp.br iburst nts
server b.st1.ntp.br iburst nts
server c.st1.ntp.br iburst nts
server d.st1.ntp.br iburst nts
sourcedir /run/chrony-dhcp
sourcedir /etc/chrony/sources.d
keyfile /etc/chrony/chrony.keys
driftfile /var/lib/chrony/chrony.drift
ntsdumpdir /var/lib/chrony
logdir /var/log/chrony
maxupdateskew 100.0
rtcsync
makestep 1 3
leapsectz right/UTC