http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=258025

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi...
The funny character "^M" appears somehow in a file I've got, and I cant figure out how to remove it... Example from file: 50514260;test_user;26.07.1999^M;.....
Thanx...

edited: Wed May 14 17:20:49 by jeffa - title change (was: silly problem)

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Removing Windows newlines
by broquaint (Abbot) on May 14, 2003 at 10:54 UTC
    This should do it 
    perl -pi -e 's/\r\n?/\n/' yourfile

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    See. perlrun for more info on perl's commandline options.
    HTH

    _________
    broquaint

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Re: Removing Windows newlines
by TStanley (Canon) on May 14, 2003 at 10:57 UTC
    The following will work, assuming that you are using some form of unix with the vi editor:
    :%s/^M//g

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    To get the control-M character, you would first type control-V, followed by the control-M

    This problem also occurs if you are trying to ftp from a Windows system to unix, and you send the file in binary format. Change it to ascii, and that should fix your problem.

    TStanley
    --------
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Re: Removing Windows newlines
by Joost (Canon) on May 14, 2003 at 10:54 UTC
    Very likely you're looking at the first part of the windows linebreak (\r\n). Try running this code with the filename as the argument: 
    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

while (my $fname = shift) {
        next unless -f $fname;
        open F,"<$fname" or die "Cannot open $fname: $!\n";
        my $file = join('',<F>);
        close F;
        $file =~ s/\r\n?/\n/g;
        open F,">$fname" or die "Cannot write $fname: $!\n";
        print F $file;
        close F;
}

    [download]
    See the Newlines section in perlport for more info. 
    -- 
#!/usr/bin/perl -np
BEGIN{@ARGV=$0}s(^([^=].*)|=)()s;
=Just another perl hacker

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Re: Removing Windows newlines
by teabag (Pilgrim) on May 14, 2003 at 11:06 UTC
    Always nasty, them windows newlines

    I always use a simple bash script to take care of this problem. It's not pretty, but it works for me.

    usage:
    ctrlm.sh oldfile.txt >newfile.txt 

    #!/bin/bash
#ctrlm.sh
cat $1 | tr -d "\015"

    [download]

    Teabag
    Sure there's more than one way, but one just needs one anyway - Teabag

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Re: Removing Windows newlines
by Abigail-II (Bishop) on May 14, 2003 at 12:06 UTC 
    $ perl -0777pli -015e0 file file file

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    Abigail

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Re: Removing Windows newlines
by riffraff (Pilgrim) on May 14, 2003 at 18:34 UTC
    dos2unix filename.txt
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Re: Removing Windows newlines
by P0w3rK!d (Pilgrim) on May 14, 2003 at 13:59 UTC
    At the command prompt: 
    sed -e s/"^M"//g <infile> > <outfile>

    [download]
    You can generate the ^M by pressing Ctrl+V then press M.

    -P0w3rK!d

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