Convert between windows text file to Unix type

dos2unix and unix2dos

The utilities dos2unix and unix2dos are available for converting files from the Unix command line.

To convert a Windows file to a Unix file, enter:

dos2unix winfile.txt unixfile.txt

To convert a Unix file to Windows, enter:

unix2dos unixfile.txt winfile.txt

tr

You can use tr to remove all carriage returns and Ctrl-z ( ^Z ) characters from a Windows file:

tr -d '\15\32' < winfile.txt > unixfile.txt

However, you cannot use tr to convert a document from Unix format to Windows.

awk

To use awk to convert a Windows file to Unix, enter:

awk '{ sub("\r$", ""); print }' winfile.txt > unixfile.txt

To convert a Unix file to Windows, enter:

awk 'sub("$", "\r")' unixfile.txt > winfile.txt

Older versions of awk do not include the sub function. In such cases, use the same command, but replace awk with gawk or nawk.

Perl

To convert a Windows text file to a Unix text file using Perl, enter:

perl -p -e 's/\r$//' < winfile.txt > unixfile.txt

To convert from a Unix text file to a Windows text file, enter:

perl -p -e 's/\n/\r\n/' < unixfile.txt > winfile.txt

You must use single quotation marks in either command line. This prevents your shell from trying to evaluate anything inside.

vi

In vi, you can remove carriage return ( ^M ) characters with the following command:

:1,$s/^M//g

Note: To input the ^M character, press Ctrl-v , and then press Enter or return.

In vim, use :set ff=unix to convert to Unix; use :set ff=dos to convert to Windows.