UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have a file on solaris/linux.

ls -ls shows the logical size to be: 13292

However, when I transfer the file to my windows machine.. Rightclick->Properties shows the file size as: 13421

I wrote a small program on unix and windows that does a stat() on the file and reports the st_size (file size in bytes) and I get the same result (13292 on windows and 13421 on unix)

Interestingly, this happens only with .txt files. For .pdf and .ppt files, the file size is the same. However, for .txt files the file size on windows is > that on unix.

For another txt file (17MB)
Windows: 18701307 bytes
Unix: 18581191

Does anybody know why is this happening ?

Thanks !

Unix text file end each line with a line feed character.
DOS/Windows text files end each line with a carriage return and line feed.
Because of this, there is one additional character in a DOS/Windows file for each line in the file. Your file contains 13421 - 13292 = 129 lines.
When you transfer the file from Unix to DOS using ascii mode in ftp, this conversion takes place automatically. If you use binary mode, no conversion takes place.

Brilliant ! that explains everything ! Thanks a lot for your help.

Nice explanation .. Great !

Nice explanation "jgt"...

Rgds,
Siva.P

what is the different between the "awk" and nawk" Programme in unix? i have some knowledge in awk concept in unix but i don't know about the "nawk" concept.

Can you any one help me ?

Regards,
Siva.P
Bangalore

Awk is the orignal awk. Nawk is "new awk" - (An enhanced version of AWK, with dynamic regular expressions, additional built-ins and operators, and user-defined functions.) and gawk is the "gnu awk"