@RussSharek hmm, my tests were preserving the extra blank lines. Are they really blank or do you have tab characters or something in them? That part before the \zs is meant to match non space characters in the line as a requirement before removing the newline at the end. Maybe it should be [^\s] instead of [\ ]. That covers a wider range of space-like characters.
Anywho, yes to your question. You can use the same syntax I did and chain your commands you were using before...