Re: Remove the ^M Character from a Document

[hacker]

You might want to try a different substitution character, to lessen the obfuscation on this syntax, such as:

perl -pi.orig -e 's#\r\n#\n#g' filespec

or

perl -pi.orig -e 's,\r\n,\n,g' filespec

Though ideally, this is more correct:

perl -pi.orig -e 's,\cM,,g' filespec # commas for clarity

[Abigail-II]

The use of the forward slash to delimited regular expressions and replacements has a history of decades - predating the birth of Perl by years. There are no forward slashes in the regular expression that could cause confusion. So, other than a fear of forward slashes, what makes you think use of a forward slash contributes to obfuscation?

Abigail

[Sifmole]

Perhaps hacker actually means that the use of another character could make things easier to read. I remember somewhere some book or other refering to the "leaning toothpick" problem.

[Abigail-II]

The leaning toothpick syndrome arises if one has to escape forward slashes. No forward slashes need to be escaped.

Pray tell us, why are comma's or hashes easier to read than forward slashes, especially considering that forward slashes are most commenly used as delimiters, while commas and hashes usually play another role?

Abigail