tab delimited file that is not tab delimited.


 
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# 1  
Old 01-23-2012
tab delimited file that is not tab delimited.

Hi Forum
I have a tab delimited file that opens well in Openoffice calc (excel). But when I perform any operation in command line, it reads the file incorrectly. When I 'save As' the same file in office as tab delimited then it works fine.

The file that I think is tab delimited is actually not the same according to unix/linux bash/sh script.

What may be the reason. My dummy guess is that there may be embedded space in between.

Which command do I use to make this file unix compatible tab delimted file.
Thanks
# 2  
Old 01-23-2012
Post output of:
Code:
cat -Te your.file | head

# 3  
Old 01-23-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by bartus11
Post output of:
Code:
cat -Te your.file | head

Code:
$ cat -Te  1327.txt | head
country^Iyear^IQty^M$
Japan^I961^I303^M$
Japan^I996^I5021^M$
Japan^I608^I2633^M$
USA^I620^I645^M$
USA^I437^I62^M$
Japan^I565^I90^M$
UK^I705^I730^M$
Japan^I5794^I819^M$
Japan^I890^I5915^M$

# 4  
Old 01-23-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by bartus11
Post output of:
Code:
cat -Te your.file | head

Code:
$ cat -Te  1327.txt | head
country^Iyear^IQty^M$
Japan^I961^I303^M$
Japan^I996^I5021^M$
Japan^I608^I2633^M$
USA^I620^I645^M$
USA^I437^I62^M$
Japan^I565^I90^M$
UK^I705^I730^M$
Japan^I5794^I819^M$
Japan^I890^I5915^M$

# 5  
Old 01-23-2012
looks like the file is using windows line endings. can you save as ascii? try converting the file to ascii.
# 6  
Old 01-23-2012
You can use "dos2unix" tool to convert Windows style newlines to Unix:
Code:
dos2unix 1327.txt > 1327-converted.txt

Try running your command line tools/scripts on the resulting file.
# 7  
Old 01-23-2012
I am working in linux and has nothing to do with windows. I used to generate these files using php. Is the php code culprit for this? I opened the same file in gedit and changed the saving parameter "line ending" from "Windows" to "unix" and worked.
Frank_rizzo and bartus11, thanks.
Is there a way to determine if it is windows file and if it is so then apply some method to convert it as I have large number of files.

Thanks

Last edited by imlearning; 01-23-2012 at 08:31 PM..
 
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