asked on

remove carriage returns from a text file

What's a fast way to remove carriage returns from a text file so a large file can become one really long line with a space between everyword?

I tried using "J" in VI over and over but I would always get "Internal error: vredraw". Any ideas?

Thanks.

ozo

perl -i -pe 'BEGIN{$\=" "}chomp;' file

rbr

cat file | awk -v ORS= "{ print $1} > newfile

chris_calabrese

tr < file '
' ' ' > newfile

dgrimes

while read rec
do
echo $rec"\c" >>outfile
done < inpfile

dgrimes

Found one little problem: Each new record needs to be separated by a space as well:

while read rec
do
echo $rec" \c" >>outfile
done < inpfile

chris_calabrese

Dgrimes: the problem with this is that the shell 'read' builtin does more than just read the line into a buffer. Rather it does all kinds of whitespace mangling and also deals with line continuation (\) processing. The whilespace mangling may actually be a good thing for this particular application, but the line continuation probably is not. In some shells you can get around this with 'read -r'.

dgrimes

Right, you would want to read with the -r switch. Also, not all shells support this feature. I was using ksh.

Thanks

rbr

jewbama: Did any of the comments solve your problem. If yes post to whom you give the points.

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mdgreen7

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chris_calabrese

Hmm, given the suggestions above, these both seem like monumentally bad ways of doing it.

dgrimes

How does this accomplish the intended goal. However, if jewbama doesn't respond, then guess who will get the points!

mdgreen7

Oops. My bad. I misread the question.
I stated quick ways to convert from cr/lf to lf....

It was my first reply - I got a little anxious :) Jeez - "monumentally bad".

chris_calabrese

Monumentally bad because it not only doesn't solve the problem, but requires a lot more effort than other suggestions already listed above that solve the problem 100%.

Don't feel bad about it, just read the comment before posting next time...