Text File on Michael’s Domain

Converting Mac text files into UNIX text files (tr)

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

If you though text files are all the same, you are wrong. Mac text file lines end with a carriage return (CR, ASCII 13), UNIX text file lines with a line feed (LF, ACII 10) and Microsoft Windows text file lines end with a combination of 2 characters: CR followed by LF. From Mac to Unix you convert with this command line: tr '\015' '\012' out_file

Deleting empty lines from text files (sed)

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

The following sed command deletes empty lines (and those with white spaces only) from text files:

sed -e '/^ *$/d' infile.txt > outfile.txt

You have to be careful though: if you copied the textfile from a Macintosh this script maybe won’t work. You first have to convert the Macintosh textfile into a UNIX textfile!