BBEdit and Tex-Edit (not TextEdit) both do this as well. BTW, although not free, BBEdit does almost everything emacs does and is OSX native...

  alias mac2unix "perl -pi -e 'tr/\015/\012/' \!*"

   % mac2unix MacTextFile.txt ...

 on open fileList
   repeat with x in fileList
     if folder of (info for x) is not true then
       set y to POSIX path of x
       do shell script ("perl -pi -e \"tr/\\015/\\12/\" " & y)
     end if
   end repeat
 end open

can I use Logan's "alias mac2unix="perl -p0015l0012e '' -i $*"" with this script

on open fileList
repeat with x in fileList
if folder of (info for x) is not true then
set y to POSIX path of x
do shell script ("perl -p0015l0012e '' -i" & y)
end if
end repeat
end open

doesn't work... no error, just wouldn't convert.

Thanks

You might be missing a space between the '-i' and the path to the file.

alias mac2unix="perl -p0015l0012e '' -i $*"

I like yours better — there's less time wasted compiling that 'tr' operation. TMTOWTDI, in any case.

re: alias mac2unix="perl -p0015l0012e '' -i $*"

Hmm, wow.

Now all I need is to fit this into an applescript, the following doesn't work.

on open fileList
repeat with x in fileList
if folder of (info for x) is not true then
set y to POSIX path of x
do shell script ("perl -p0015l0012e '' -i" & y)
end if
end repeat
end open

That's an l (lower case "L"), not a "|" pipe. See what a difference that makes to your script.

cheers
RET

You can also do this in vim, which if you haven't installed instead of the stock vi, you really should.

open the file (you'll see the line-ending type in the status line if it's not the default one)
type:
:set ff=unix
- or -
:set ff=mac
-or -
:set ff=dos

to set what you want the format to be, and
:wq

to write and quit.

Even so, a drag-n-droppable tool would be better.

cheers
RET

A GUI(Aqua) and free method is to use Project Builder, which comes with DevTools.

Under "format" you have the choice of Mac, Unix or Windows line endings.
It also gives you a large choice of file encodings.

For the vi folks (I'm sure there are a vew) this is how you do it:

:%s/^M/^J/g

Easy, eh?

And if you've got a DOS-sourced file, it is:

:%s/^M//

By the way, to get the ^M, don't type a literal caret-m. Type ctrl-v then ctrl-m. The ctrl-v tells vi that the next char you type is a special character (this is how you embed an escape character or backspace also).

cheers
RET

Emacs has builtin functionality to convert between file types.

Type control-x return f

Then type undecided-unix, undecided-mac, or undecided-dos for what format you want the file changed too.

thanks cadre, this was the hack i was
looking for. i knew it was in emacs
somewhere (everything is in a kitchen sink:)
but couldn't find just where.

rik

A quicker way for the command line inclined is to use the command `tr':

Say you have a text file, myText.txt, and you want to translate the carriage returns to new line characters. Then boot up the terminal, cd to the proper directory, and then type:

cat myText.txt | tr "r" "n" > out.txt

Where out.txt is the name of the converted text file.

Granted, if you were doing this a lot, you should make a shell script and stick it in your ~/bin directory. I would probably make a Perl script, just because I'm more comfortable with that.

For the curious, sed could also get the job done.

-Jeff

Close, but not quite. I think the command you list above will replace all the 'r' characters with 'n' characters in the text file which is not the desired result.

Here is the command I regularly use:

tr 'r' 'n' < infile.txt > outfile.txt

The trick is to use the backslash to represent the CR and NL characters respectively.

And the band played on...

This must be my cue to come in an ask if the attack of the invisible backslashes can be cured. Please! It's happening again and again. Apologies to those who have seen me whine about this already.

I dread to think what might happen if someone posts a nice command which requires a backslashed escape in a file path and someone cuts and pastes. (Sure, the user should know exactly what's being done before doing it, but bets on not everyone obeying that maxim?)

Cheers,
Paul (complete with melodrama this time...)

I think you can present a backslash\ by entering it as an HTML entity (&#092;), but it might not survive the preview.