Sponsored Content
Top Forums UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers Any tip to replacing the special characters in a file Post 303026967 by RudiC on Wednesday 5th of December 2018 06:23:23 PM
Old 12-05-2018
Do those characters really hurt?

We're seeing copious amounts of 'NO-BREAK SPACE' (U+00A0) Unicode Characters in your file, represented as multibyte UTF-8 0xC2 0xA0 (or \302 \240 in octal) char. sed definitely is NOT the right tool to cope with those in general (although it might with single occurrences). What encodings does your Microsoft host use? What your *nix node?


Some conversion might already be done during transfer by using the right ftp options / settings. Or use the dos2unix tool. Or iconv or recode commands.


For exactly above problem,

Code:
sed 's/\o302\o240/ /g' /tmp/special_chars.txt

might suffice...


EDIT: I vaguely remember from your recent post that you are using Solaris (you don't mention it here). Not sure if any of above is available, then. YMMV.

Last edited by RudiC; 12-06-2018 at 07:12 AM.. Reason: typos
 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

search special characters in a file

Hello I am new to shell scripting and can anyone tell me how to check if there are any special characters in a file. Can i use grep ? thanks susie (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: cramya80
2 Replies

2. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

how to see special characters in a file using vi

Hi, I have a file which has special characters. I can't see them when I "vi" the file. But I am sure there are some special un seen characters. How can I see them? Please help. Thx (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: jingi1234
6 Replies

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

Replacing French special characters

Hi, I have tonnes of .txt files that are written in French. I need to replace the French special characters, however, with English equivalents (e.g. é -> e and ç -> c). I have tried this --- #!/bin/bash # Convert French characters to normal characters # Treat each of the files exec... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: BlueberryPickle
4 Replies

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

help on sed replacing special characters

Hello, I have a file with many lines with below format: \abc\\1234 jkl\\567 def\\345 \pqr\\567 \xyz\\234 Here, i need to do 2 things. 1. replace \\ with \ 2. remove starting \ so output to be as below: (11 Replies)
Discussion started by: prvnrk
11 Replies

5. Shell Programming and Scripting

Renaming a file and replacing the special character in the name with date

HI all, How can i rename some files and replace the special character in the name with todays date ex: Name#file1.txt Name#file2.txt to be renamed as Name.20091119.file1.txt Name.20091119.file2.txt (11 Replies)
Discussion started by: abhinav192
11 Replies

6. Shell Programming and Scripting

Replacing string with special characters in shell

Hi, I am trying to replace a string in shell but it is not working correctly. @xcom.file@ needs to be replaced with tb137 Plz help.Thx. Please use and tags when posting code, data or logs etc. to preserve formatting and enhance readability, thanks. (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: manish72
4 Replies

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

Need help in replacing special characters

I am writing a ksh script. I need to replace a set of characters in an xml file. FROM="ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖØÙÛÚÜÝßàáâãäåçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö¿¶ø®"; TO="AAAAAAACEEEEIIIIDNOOOOOOUUUUYSaaaaaaceeeeiiiionooooo N R" I have used the code- sed 's/$FROM/$TO/g'<abc.xml But its not working. Can anyone tell me the code to do this? (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: saga20
3 Replies

8. Shell Programming and Scripting

File containing special characters

Hello All, I am facing challenges in order to transfer a file from windows to unix box,the file contains a special character '×' ,now when I am transferring the file from windows to unix that special character converted to something else like 'Ã' ,another thing I have noticed that the hardware is... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: prarat
1 Replies

9. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Replacing valuses containig space and special characters

**Extremely sorry for the typos in heading Old:CAST ('${DEFAULT_HIGH_DATE}' AS DATE FORMAT 'YYYY-MM-DD') New :CAST(CAST('${G_DEFAULT_HIGH_DATE}' AS DATE FORMAT 'MM-DD-YYYY') as DATE FORMAT 'YYYY-MM-DD') Need to change old format as new format cat file1 CAST ('${DEFAULT_HIGH_DATE}' AS... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: 100bees
1 Replies

10. UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers

Replacing string/special characters using a 'conversion' table

Hi, Does anyone know if there is a script or program available out there that uses a conversion table to replace special characters from a file? I am trying to remove some special characters from a file but there are several unprintable/control characters that some I need to remove but some I... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: newbie_01
2 Replies
dos2unix(1)							    2014-06-09							       dos2unix(1)

NAME
dos2unix - DOS/Mac to Unix and vice versa text file format converter SYNOPSIS
dos2unix [options] [FILE ...] [-n INFILE OUTFILE ...] unix2dos [options] [FILE ...] [-n INFILE OUTFILE ...] DESCRIPTION
The Dos2unix package includes utilities "dos2unix" and "unix2dos" to convert plain text files in DOS or Mac format to Unix format and vice versa. In DOS/Windows text files a line break, also known as newline, is a combination of two characters: a Carriage Return (CR) followed by a Line Feed (LF). In Unix text files a line break is a single character: the Line Feed (LF). In Mac text files, prior to Mac OS X, a line break was single Carriage Return (CR) character. Nowadays Mac OS uses Unix style (LF) line breaks. Binary files are automatically skipped, unless conversion is forced. Non-regular files, such as directories and FIFOs, are automatically skipped. Symbolic links and their targets are by default kept untouched. Symbolic links can optionally be replaced, or the output can be written to the symbolic link target. Symbolic links on Windows are not supported. Windows symbolic links always replaced, keeping the targets unchanged. Dos2unix was modelled after dos2unix under SunOS/Solaris and has similar conversion modes. OPTIONS
-- Treat all following options as file names. Use this option if you want to convert files whose names start with a dash. For instance to convert a file named "-foo", you can use this command: dos2unix -- -foo Or in new file mode: dos2unix -n -- -foo out.txt -ascii Convert only line breaks. This is the default conversion mode. -iso Conversion between DOS and ISO-8859-1 character set. See also section CONVERSION MODES. -1252 Use Windows code page 1252 (Western European). -437 Use DOS code page 437 (US). This is the default code page used for ISO conversion. -850 Use DOS code page 850 (Western European). -860 Use DOS code page 860 (Portuguese). -863 Use DOS code page 863 (French Canadian). -865 Use DOS code page 865 (Nordic). -7 Convert 8 bit characters to 7 bit space. -c, --convmode CONVMODE Set conversion mode. Where CONVMODE is one of: ascii, 7bit, iso, mac with ascii being the default. -f, --force Force conversion of binary files. -h, --help Display help and exit. -k, --keepdate Keep the date stamp of output file same as input file. -L, --license Display program's license. -l, --newline Add additional newline. dos2unix: Only DOS line breaks are changed to two Unix line breaks. In Mac mode only Mac line breaks are changed to two Unix line breaks. unix2dos: Only Unix line breaks are changed to two DOS line breaks. In Mac mode Unix line breaks are changed to two Mac line breaks. -m, --add-bom Write an UTF-8 Byte Order Mark in the output file. Never use this option when the output encoding is other than UTF-8. See also section UNICODE. -n, --newfile INFILE OUTFILE ... New file mode. Convert file INFILE and write output to file OUTFILE. File names must be given in pairs and wildcard names should not be used or you will lose your files. The person who starts the conversion in new file (paired) mode will be the owner of the converted file. The read/write permissions of the new file will be the permissions of the original file minus the umask(1) of the person who runs the conversion. -o, --oldfile FILE ... Old file mode. Convert file FILE and overwrite output to it. The program defaults to run in this mode. Wildcard names may be used. In old file (in-place) mode the converted file gets the same owner, group, and read/write permissions as the original file. Also when the file is converted by another user who has write permissions on the file (e.g. user root). The conversion will be aborted when it is not possible to preserve the original values. Change of owner could mean that the original owner is not able to read the file any more. Change of group could be a security risk, the file could be made readable for persons for whom it is not intended. Preservation of owner, group, and read/write permissions is only supported on Unix. -q, --quiet Quiet mode. Suppress all warnings and messages. The return value is zero. Except when wrong command-line options are used. -s, --safe Skip binary files (default). -F, --follow-symlink Follow symbolic links and convert the targets. -R, --replace-symlink Replace symbolic links with converted files (original target files remain unchanged). -S, --skip-symlink Keep symbolic links and targets unchanged (default). -V, --version Display version information and exit. MAC MODE
In normal mode line breaks are converted from DOS to Unix and vice versa. Mac line breaks are not converted. In Mac mode line breaks are converted from Mac to Unix and vice versa. DOS line breaks are not changed. To run in Mac mode use the command-line option "-c mac" or use the commands "mac2unix" or "unix2mac". CONVERSION MODES
Conversion modes ascii, 7bit, and iso are similar to those of dos2unix/unix2dos under SunOS/Solaris. ascii In mode "ascii" only line breaks are converted. This is the default conversion mode. Although the name of this mode is ASCII, which is a 7 bit standard, the actual mode is 8 bit. Use always this mode when converting Unicode UTF-8 files. 7bit In this mode all 8 bit non-ASCII characters (with values from 128 to 255) are converted to a 7 bit space. iso Characters are converted between a DOS character set (code page) and ISO character set ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) on Unix. DOS characters without ISO-8859-1 equivalent, for which conversion is not possible, are converted to a dot. The same counts for ISO-8859-1 characters without DOS counterpart. When only option "-iso" is used dos2unix will try to determine the active code page. When this is not possible dos2unix will use default code page CP437, which is mainly used in the USA. To force a specific code page use options "-437" (US), "-850" (Western European), "-860" (Portuguese), "-863" (French Canadian), or "-865" (Nordic). Windows code page CP1252 (Western European) is also supported with option "-1252". For other code pages use dos2unix in combination with iconv(1). Iconv can convert between a long list of character encodings. Never use ISO converion on Unicode text files. It will corrupt UTF-8 encoded files. Some examples: Convert from DOS default code page to Unix Latin-1 dos2unix -iso -n in.txt out.txt Convert from DOS CP850 to Unix Latin-1 dos2unix -850 -n in.txt out.txt Convert from Windows CP1252 to Unix Latin-1 dos2unix -1252 -n in.txt out.txt Convert from Windows CP1252 to Unix UTF-8 (Unicode) iconv -f CP1252 -t UTF-8 in.txt | dos2unix > out.txt Convert from Unix Latin-1 to DOS default code page. unix2dos -iso -n in.txt out.txt Convert from Unix Latin-1 to DOS CP850 unix2dos -850 -n in.txt out.txt Convert from Unix Latin-1 to Windows CP1252 unix2dos -1252 -n in.txt out.txt Convert from Unix UTF-8 (Unicode) to Windows CP1252 unix2dos < in.txt | iconv -f UTF-8 -t CP1252 > out.txt See also <http://czyborra.com/charsets/codepages.html> and <http://czyborra.com/charsets/iso8859.html>. UNICODE
Encodings There exist different Unicode encodings. On Unix and Linux Unicode files are typically encoded in UTF-8 encoding. On Windows Unicode text files can be encoded in UTF-8, UTF-16, or UTF-16 big endian, but are mostly encoded in UTF-16 format. Conversion Unicode text files can have DOS, Unix or Mac line breaks, like regular text files. All versions of dos2unix and unix2dos can convert UTF-8 encoded files, because UTF-8 was designed for backward compatiblity with ASCII. Dos2unix and unix2dos with Unicode UTF-16 support, can read little and big endian UTF-16 encoded text files. To see if dos2unix was built with UTF-16 support type "dos2unix -V". The Windows versions of dos2unix and unix2dos convert UTF-16 encoded files always to UTF-8 encoded files. Unix versions of dos2unix/unix2dos convert UTF-16 encoded files to the locale character encoding when it is set to UTF-8. Use the locale(1) command to find out what the locale character encoding is. Because UTF-8 formatted text files are well supported on both Windows and Unix, dos2unix and unix2dos have no option to write UTF-16 files. All UTF-16 characters can be encoded in UTF-8. Conversion from UTF-16 to UTF-8 is without loss. UTF-16 files will be skipped on Unix when the locale character encoding is not UTF-8, to prevent accidental loss of text. When an UTF-16 to UTF-8 conversion error occurs, for instance when the UTF-16 input file contains an error, the file will be skipped. ISO and 7-bit mode conversion do not work on UTF-16 files. Byte Order Mark On Windows Unicode text files typically have a Byte Order Mark (BOM), because many Windows programs (including Notepad) add BOMs by default. See also <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark>. On Unix Unicode files typically don't have a BOM. It is assumed that text files are encoded in the locale character encoding. Dos2unix can only detect if a file is in UTF-16 format if the file has a BOM. When an UTF-16 file doesn't have a BOM, dos2unix will see the file as a binary file. Use dos2unix in combination with iconv(1) to convert an UTF-16 file without BOM. Dos2unix never writes a BOM in the output file, unless you use option "-m". Unix2dos writes a BOM in the output file when the input file has a BOM, or when option "-m" is used. Unicode examples Convert from Windows UTF-16 (with BOM) to Unix UTF-8 dos2unix -n in.txt out.txt Convert from Windows UTF-16 (without BOM) to Unix UTF-8 iconv -f UTF-16 -t UTF-8 in.txt | dos2unix > out.txt Convert from Unix UTF-8 to Windows UTF-8 with BOM unix2dos -m -n in.txt out.txt Convert from Unix UTF-8 to Windows UTF-16 unix2dos < in.txt | iconv -f UTF-8 -t UTF-16 > out.txt EXAMPLES
Read input from 'stdin' and write output to 'stdout'. dos2unix dos2unix -l -c mac Convert and replace a.txt. Convert and replace b.txt. dos2unix a.txt b.txt dos2unix -o a.txt b.txt Convert and replace a.txt in ascii conversion mode. dos2unix a.txt Convert and replace a.txt in ascii conversion mode. Convert and replace b.txt in 7bit conversion mode. dos2unix a.txt -c 7bit b.txt dos2unix -c ascii a.txt -c 7bit b.txt dos2unix -ascii a.txt -7 b.txt Convert a.txt from Mac to Unix format. dos2unix -c mac a.txt mac2unix a.txt Convert a.txt from Unix to Mac format. unix2dos -c mac a.txt unix2mac a.txt Convert and replace a.txt while keeping original date stamp. dos2unix -k a.txt dos2unix -k -o a.txt Convert a.txt and write to e.txt. dos2unix -n a.txt e.txt Convert a.txt and write to e.txt, keep date stamp of e.txt same as a.txt. dos2unix -k -n a.txt e.txt Convert and replace a.txt. Convert b.txt and write to e.txt. dos2unix a.txt -n b.txt e.txt dos2unix -o a.txt -n b.txt e.txt Convert c.txt and write to e.txt. Convert and replace a.txt. Convert and replace b.txt. Convert d.txt and write to f.txt. dos2unix -n c.txt e.txt -o a.txt b.txt -n d.txt f.txt RECURSIVE CONVERSION
Use dos2unix in combination with the find(1) and xargs(1) commands to recursively convert text files in a directory tree structure. For instance to convert all .txt files in the directory tree under the current directory type: find . -name *.txt |xargs dos2unix LOCALIZATION
LANG The primary language is selected with the environment variable LANG. The LANG variable consists out of several parts. The first part is in small letters the language code. The second is optional and is the country code in capital letters, preceded with an underscore. There is also an optional third part: character encoding, preceded with a dot. A few examples for POSIX standard type shells: export LANG=nl Dutch export LANG=nl_NL Dutch, The Netherlands export LANG=nl_BE Dutch, Belgium export LANG=es_ES Spanish, Spain export LANG=es_MX Spanish, Mexico export LANG=en_US.iso88591 English, USA, Latin-1 encoding export LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 English, UK, UTF-8 encoding For a complete list of language and country codes see the gettext manual: <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html#Language-Codes> On Unix systems you can use to command locale(1) to get locale specific information. LANGUAGE With the LANGUAGE environment variable you can specify a priority list of languages, separated by colons. Dos2unix gives preference to LANGUAGE over LANG. For instance, first Dutch and then German: "LANGUAGE=nl:de". You have to first enable localization, by setting LANG (or LC_ALL) to a value other than "C", before you can use a language priority list through the LANGUAGE variable. See also the gettext manual: <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html#The-LANGUAGE-variable> If you select a language which is not available you will get the standard English messages. DOS2UNIX_LOCALEDIR With the environment variable DOS2UNIX_LOCALEDIR the LOCALEDIR set during compilation can be overruled. LOCALEDIR is used to find the language files. The GNU default value is "/usr/local/share/locale". Option --version will display the LOCALEDIR that is used. Example (POSIX shell): export DOS2UNIX_LOCALEDIR=$HOME/share/locale RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned. When a system error occurs the last system error will be returned. For other errors 1 is returned. The return value is always zero in quiet mode, except when wrong command-line options are used. STANDARDS
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_file> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carriage_return> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode> AUTHORS
Benjamin Lin - <blin@socs.uts.edu.au> Bernd Johannes Wuebben (mac2unix mode) - <wuebben@kde.org>, Christian Wurll (add extra newline) - <wurll@ira.uka.de>, Erwin Waterlander - <waterlan@xs4all.nl> (Maintainer) Project page: <http://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/dos2unix.html> SourceForge page: <http://sourceforge.net/projects/dos2unix/> Freecode: <http://freecode.com/projects/dos2unix> SEE ALSO
file(1) find(1) iconv(1) locale(1) xargs(1) dos2unix 2012-09-15 dos2unix(1)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 09:54 PM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy