UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I've got a file where each line is separated by ^M characters. I want to be able to cat the file without those lines. When I cat the file now what I see are blank lines. However, the blank lines are actually ^M characters; when I open the file with vi they show up.

Code:

X38888
No
No
No
X38888

X39999
No
No
No
X39999

This is what it looks like in vi:

Code:

^M
X38888
No
No
No
X38888
^M
X39999
No
No
No
X39999

I have tried cat file |sed '/^M/d' to remove them and also perl commands. I was unable to remove them, or it appears that they did not remove, as the blank lines remained. I was also unable to remove the blank lines with cat file |sed '/^$/d' as well.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to remove the blank line that the ^M appears to be producing?

A Control-M character is the 'Carriage Return". Depending on what version of unix you are running, and what you are running on (server type, pc, etc...) this may have meaning. Or, it may be safe to remove.

\r = carriage return
\n = new line

I just want to remove it. When I remove it through vi the blank lines are gone and the character is gone too. However, I need to do this removal by sed or awk.

have you tried

Code:

dos2unix filename filename

The standard way is

Code:

tr -d '\r' < file.dos > file.ux

worked great. I found that after that, all I had to do was run a sed command to then remove the blank lines

If you want to remove lines ended by a ^M character:

Code:

sed '/^M$/d' /pathto/infile > /path/to/outfile

In case you want to delete only the character itself, but not the line:

Code:

sed 's/^M//g' /pathto/infile > /path/to/outfile

Notice that "^M" is ONE character, not two! (You will see this when you pass over it with the cursor in "vi".) If you enter caret-M, nothing will happen at all. To enter the "^M" character press CTRL-V, then press the "ENTER" key (or "CTRL-M", which is the same).

I hope this helps.

bakunin