UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hey guys,

I'm trying to copy files listed in a text file to a new folder. Here is the UNIX script I've using:

(first pulling all the lines that contain files, removing everything but the file names in each line, then trying to pass to xargs to copy)

Code:

grep sample test.txt | sed -e 's/.*<START>//' -e 's/<STOP>.*//' | xargs {} cp ~/Desktop/Content/{} ~/Desktop/test/

The output/error looks like:

cp: /Users/<me>/Desktop/Content/onefilefromlist.wav\r: No such file or directory

It looks almost correct except for the '\r' being appended. Everything looks good before using xargs... am I doing something wrong with xargs that is adding a '\r' EOL fragment?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Cheers!
Chad

try this ..

Code:

grep sample test.txt | sed -e 's/.*<START>//' -e 's/<STOP>.*//' | xargs -i{} cp ~/Desktop/Content/{} ~/Desktop/test/

Note: -i{}

Perhaps the \r originates from test.txt and test.txt is in dos/windows format instead of unix format?

Hi guys,

Thank you for the suggestions. This last one did the trick!

I performed this on the file first to get it to unix format:

Code:

tr '\r' '\n' < "sample test.txt" > unixformattext.txt

The the rest went perfectly, no more \r format hanging on the end of each line.

Not sure why that "\r" only appears when routing the stream through xargs??? Up to that point if I wrote to a file or passed to other commands it wouldn't appear... or wasn't visible.

Thanks again,
Chad