Re: dos2unix question

["Wilcox, John (WWC, Contractor)" <wilcoxj -at- WDNI -dot- COM>]

> ----------
> From:         Cathy Carr[SMTP:ccarr -at- OVID -dot- COM]
>
> We offer all of our docs in ascii text, along with other formats.  The
> ascii txt is for the convenience of our sysadmins who use UNIX.  I use
> an
> in-house text editor to do this on the DOS platform and I've had no
> complaints.  Recently, however, one of our QA guys entered a request
> that I
> dos2unix all of the TXT files, in order to get rid of "^m" characters
> at
> the ends of the lines.
.
.
.
> So I guess my main question would be:
>
> is it standard procedure to dos2unix TXT files for UNIX customers?
>
I've done lots of UNIX software documentation, and I have seen this
problem arise occasionally.  The solution lies in HOW you transfer the
files to the UNIX platform.  Some network operating systems can be
configured from the client side to automatically delete the newline at
the end of DOS text file lines when a file is copied to UNIX and
automatically add it when copying from UNIX to DOS.  Some file transfer
programs can be configured to do this, too.

When an offending file was found, I would just telnet to the UNIX
machine, bring up the file in vi, and strip out the newlines therein.
To do so, type this ed command:
        :%s/^M//
To get that ^M, press Ctrl+V followed by Ctrl+M.

Hope this helps.  Let me know if you need further info.



Regards,

John Wilcox, Documentation Specialist
Timberlands Information Services, Application Delivery Group
Weyerhaeuser, WWC 2E2, Box 2999
Tacoma, WA 98477-2999 USA
253-924-7972  mailto:wilcoxj -at- wdni -dot- com
(I don't speak for Weyerhaeuser, and they return the favor.)