Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi Gurus,

I have a file which has only one huge line. I want to split it to multiple lines.
when I use

Code:

fold -w30 filename.

it can not split the file.
when using

Code:

fold -sw30 filename.

it works fine.
in man file, the -s break at spaces.
in previous posting, I got one script which using awk split file. it worked perfect for my old file. but it can not split this file.

Code:

awk '{for (i=1; i<=length($0); i+=10) print substr($0, i, 10)}' oldfilename > newfilename

I am wondering what I need change to make this awk script working.
when using

Code:

cat -A

I can see a special charactor ^@.
using

Code:

cat -evt

I can not see

Thanks in advance.

What do you actually mean by that?
So, do you have a null character in your input file? Try passing the input through tr.

Code:

tr -d '\0' < inputfile | fold -w30

Thanks for your quick reply.
what i tried to say is
when using

Code:

fold -sw30

,
it can split the file correctly, but when using

Code:

fold -w30

it can not split the file.

when run

Code:

 tr -d '\0' filename

I got error

Code:

tr: extra operand `filename'
Only one string may be given when deleting without squeezing repeats.

I am not sure if there is null charactor, when using

Code:

cat -A

I can see special charactor

Code:

^@

thanks

Did you read my post carefully? I said tr -d '\0' < inputfile and not what you tried.

And, ^@ is the ASCII representation of the null character (in caret notation).

you are right. it works. one more question. how can I replace this NULL character with space?

thanks in advance.

You can do that using tr too.

Code:

tr '\0' ' ' < inputfile

Thanks both of you.

I got another problem. the row count are different
when using

Code:

fold -sw filename

and

Code:

tr '\0'  ' ' < filename

do you know why?

thanks in advance.