Convert text from windows to linux

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How to Convert Windows/DOS Text Files to Linux/UNIX Format

October 26, 2010 by Ubuntu Genius

A Quick Intro to End-Of-Line

Most people don’t realise that when they hit the Enter key to create a new paragraph in a text file, something very different is going on behind the scenes in the three major operating systems: Windows , Macintosh and Linux . The “end-of-line delimiter” (often expressed as “End-Of-Line“, “End of Line“, or just “EOL“) – which some of you know as the “line break” or “newline” – is a special character used to designate the end of a line within a text file .

UNIX -based operating systems (like all Linux distros and BSD derivatives) use the line feed character ( n or ), “classic” Mac OS uses a carriage return ( r or ), while DOS/Windows uses a carriage return followed by a line feed ( rn or ). Now that Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD‘s file system, it follows the UNIX convention.

Now, the reason most people don’t know about all this is because nobody really should have to. But while users of Linux distros and Mac OS can open Windows text files in basically any available editor and not even know the difference, the same can’t be said for Windows users opening files created in one of the other operating systems.

If you type up a simple text file in Ubuntu and save it in the default “ Unix/Linux ” format, in Windows it will appear as one continuous paragraph, with black squares where the line breaks (or new paragraphs) should be. While you can open the file in a more advanced text editor (or proper word processor) to view it as it should look, others you’ve sent it to are just likely to double-click it and let it open in Notepad (which can only handle MS-DOS EOL).

Occasionally, the reverse is the issue, but you can convert Windows text files to UNIX easily with Gedit , as well as convert them via the terminal, so hopefully the following guide will be of use.

For more detailed info on End-Of-Line , go to the Wikipedia page.

Converting Windows EOL to Linux via the Terminal

If you find the text editor you’re using to display Windows files in Ubuntu shows ^M instead of a line break (not very likely with even the most lightweight text editors, but something you’ll probably come across if you display the text in a terminal), don’t worry – just convert them to Unix/Linux format.

While you can actually open them in Gedit and use Save As… to save over them (or to create copies) in the correct format, for more than a couple of files this would be the long, complicated solution.

By far the quickest and easiest approach is to convert the offending files via the command-line. This way, you could batch-convert hundreds of such files at once, not have to do them individually.
There are actually quite a few ways to do this, but we’ll look at a couple of tiny packages you can install, and the related commands to use.

The first – the tofrodos package – is undoubtedly the most widely-used, so we’ll look at that in detail – especially since many of the guides out there are outdated, since the commands it contains have been renamed.

The second is a little package called flip , and since it’s tiny and won’t cause any issues, it’s worth installing as a backup (just in case. I found it useful after trying to get tofrodos going on a new system, before I found out the commands were changed).

There is no actual command tofrodos , as it is just the package that contains the commands todos and fromdos . Currently, the vast majority of online guides will list the commands as unix2dos and dos2unix , but as the developer states:

With this release the symlinks “unix2dos” and “dos2unix” are dropped from the package. This will allow the introduction of the original dos2unix package, which also supports conversion to MacOS style files.

So now you can choose to use either todos (to convert to Windows ) and fromdos (to convert to Linux ), or just fromdos with options ( fromdos -u to convert to DOS , and fromdos -d to convert to UNIX , though obviously the -d option really isn’t needed, as it is the default behaviour for the fromdos command).

We’ll use fromdos , as it is easier to remember, and show how to alter a single file, or all text files in a given folder. When you’re ready to proceed, open a terminal in the folder containing the text file(s) and use one of the following commands (note that for the purpose of illustration, the .txt suffix is used, but you can specify any other extension for your text files).

To Convert to UNIX/Linux via Terminal :

Single file (remember to replace filename.txt with the actual name of the file)

fromdos filename.txt

All text files in a folder (if the extension differs to .txt, simply replace it in the command)

fromdos *.txt

Similarly, flip is easy to use:

flip -u filename.txt (or flip -u *.txt for multiple files)

Converting Windows EOL to Linux with Gedit

It’s actually very easy to convert text files with Windows EOL to Unix/Linux in Ubuntu using the default Text Editor , Gedit . Simply open the files, choose Save As…, go to Line Ending in the dialogue box and choose Unix/Linux instead of Windows . While that is easy enough, for more than one or two you’d really want to save yourself some time and hassle and perform a batch-conversion via the terminal.

Did this information make your day? Did it rescue you from hours of headache? Then please consider making a donation via PayPal, to buy me a donut, beer, or some fish’n’chips for my time and effort! Many thanks!

Источник

Convert between Unix and Windows text files

Overview

The format of Windows and Unix text files differs slightly. In Windows, lines end with both the line feed and carriage return ASCII characters, but Unix uses only a line feed. As a consequence, some Windows applications will not show the line breaks in Unix-format files. Likewise, Unix programs may display the carriage returns in Windows text files with Ctrl-m ( ^M ) characters at the end of each line.

There are many ways to solve this problem. This document provides instructions for using FTP, screen capture, unix2dos and dos2unix, tr , awk , Perl, and vi to do the conversion. To use these utilities, the files you are converting must be on a Unix computer.

When using an FTP program to move a text file between Unix and Windows, be sure the file is transferred in ASCII format, so the document is transformed into a text format appropriate for the host. Some FTP programs, especially graphical applications, do this automatically. If you are using command line FTP, before you begin the transfer, enter:

You can use tr to remove all carriage returns and Ctrl-z ( ^Z ) characters from a Windows file:

However, you cannot use tr to convert a document from Unix format to Windows.

To use awk to convert a Windows file to Unix, enter:

To convert a Unix file to Windows, enter:

Older versions of awk do not include the sub function. In such cases, use the same command, but replace awk with gawk or nawk .

To convert a Windows text file to a Unix text file using Perl, enter:

To convert from a Unix text file to a Windows text file, enter:

You must use single quotation marks in either command line. This prevents your shell from trying to evaluate anything inside.

In vi, you can remove carriage return ( ^M ) characters with the following command:

To input the ^M character, press Ctrl-v , and then press Enter or return .

In vim, use :set ff=unix to convert to Unix; use :set ff=dos to convert to Windows.

This is document acux in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2019-12-17 14:27:06 .

Источник

How do I convert a Windows text file to Linux?

How do I run a .TXT file in Linux?

Here is an example:

1. $cd /tmp.
2. $mkdir run.
3. $cd run.
4. $nano text. txt.
5. #!/usr/bin/env perl.
6. print “Hello Worldn”;
7. ^x to save file.
8. $chmod +x text. txt.

How do I convert a file from Windows to Unix?

To convert a Windows file to a UNIX file, enter the following command:

1. awk ‘< sub(“r$”, “”); print >’ windows.txt > unix.txt.
2. awk ‘sub(“$”, “r”)’ uniz.txt > windows.txt.
3. tr -d ‘1532’ unixfile.txt.

How do I transfer files from Windows to Linux?

To transfer data between Windows and Linux, simply open FileZilla on a Windows machine and follow the below steps:

1. Navigate and open File > Site Manager.
2. Click a New Site.
3. Set the Protocol to SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol).
4. Set the Hostname to the IP address of the Linux machine.
5. Set the Logon Type as Normal.

How do you change a TXT file in Linux?

How to edit files in Linux

1. Press the ESC key for normal mode.
2. Press i Key for insert mode.
3. Press :q! keys to exit from the editor without saving a file.
4. Press :wq! Keys to save the updated file and exit from the editor.
5. Press :w test. txt to save the file as test. txt.

How do I run a text file in command prompt?

On a Windows machine, we can open a text file from command prompt by just giving the file name. For example to open a text file named file1. txt, we just need to type file1. txt in the command prompt and press ‘Enter’.

How do I run a script in a text file?

This is called a script. Right click on the text file, select properties, select permission, mark the “Let this file be executed” text box. Now you can execute it just by double clicking on the file.

How do I open a Unix file in Windows?

Logging into an UNIX server

1. Download PuTTY from here.
2. Install using the default settings on your computer.
3. Double-click the PuTTY icon.
4. Enter the UNIX/Linux server hostname in the ‘Host Name’ box, and press the ‘Open’ button at the bottom of the dialog box.
5. Enter your username and password when prompted.

How do I open a Linux file in Windows?

Ext2Fsd. Ext2Fsd is a Windows file system driver for the Ext2, Ext3, and Ext4 file systems. It allows Windows to read Linux file systems natively, providing access to the file system via a drive letter that any program can access. You can have Ext2Fsd launch at every boot or only open it when you need it.

How do you change a file format in Unix?

HowTo: Unix / Linux Rename File Extension From . OLD to . NEW

1. mv old-file-name new-file-name. To rename a file called resume.docz to resume.doc, run:
2. mv resume.docz resume.doc ls -l resume.doc. To rename file extension from .txt to .doc, enter:
3. mv foo.txt foo.doc ls -l foo.doc ## error ## ls -l foo.txt. To fix the extension of all your .txt files, enter::
4. rename .txt .doc *.txt.

How to share files between a Linux and Windows computer

1. Open the Control Panel.
2. Go to Network and Sharing Options.
3. Go to Change Advanced Sharing Settings.
4. Select Turn on Network Discovery and Turn on File and Print Sharing.

How do I download files from Linux to Windows?

1. Step 1: Download pscp. https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/

sgtatham/putty/latest.html. …

How do I copy and paste from Linux to Windows?

Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V

If you highlight text in the terminal window with your mouse and hit Ctrl+Shift+C you’ll copy that text into a clipboard buffer. You can use Ctrl+Shift+V to paste the copied text into the same terminal window, or into another terminal window.

How do I open and edit a file in Linux?

Edit the file with vim:

1. Open the file in vim with the command “vim”. …
2. Type “/” and then the name of the value you would like to edit and press Enter to search for the value in the file. …
3. Type “i” to enter insert mode.
4. Modify the value that you would like to change using the arrow keys on your keyboard.

How do you overwrite a file in Linux?

To overwrite one file’s content to another file. use cat eg. If you have output that can have errors, you may want to use an ampersand and a greater than, as follows: my_task &> ‘Users/Name/Desktop/task_output.

How do I edit a file without opening it in Linux?

Yes, you can use ‘sed’ (the Stream EDitor) to search for any number of patterns or lines by number and replace, delete, or add to them, then write the output to a new file, after which the new file can replace the original file by renaming it to the old name.

Источник

A Quick Intro to End-Of-Line

Most people don’t realise that when they hit the Enter key to create a new paragraph in a text file, something very different is going on behind the scenes in the three major operating systems: Windows, Macintosh and Linux. The “end-of-line delimiter” (often expressed as “End-Of-Line“, “End of Line“, or just “EOL“) – which some of you know as the “line break” or “newline” – is a special character used to designate the end of a line within a text file.

UNIX-based operating systems (like all Linux distros and BSD derivatives) use the line feed character (n or <LF>), “classic” Mac OS uses a carriage return (r or <CR>), while DOS/Windows uses a carriage return followed by a line feed (rn or <CR><LF>). Now that Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD‘s file system, it follows the UNIX convention.

Now, the reason most people don’t know about all this is because nobody really should have to. But while users of Linux distros and Mac OS can open Windows text files in basically any available editor and not even know the difference, the same can’t be said for Windows users opening files created in one of the other operating systems.

If you type up a simple text file in Ubuntu and save it in the default “Unix/Linux” format, in Windows it will appear as one continuous paragraph, with black squares where the line breaks (or new paragraphs) should be. While you can open the file in a more advanced text editor (or proper word processor) to view it as it should look, others you’ve sent it to are just likely to double-click it and let it open in Notepad (which can only handle MS-DOS EOL).

Occasionally, the reverse is the issue, but you can convert Windows text files to UNIX easily with Gedit, as well as convert them via the terminal, so hopefully the following guide will be of use.

For more detailed info on End-Of-Line, go to the Wikipedia page.

Or if you’re wanting to do the reverse, check out how to convert to Windows format via the terminal and with Save As… in Gedit.

Converting Windows EOL to Linux via the Terminal

If you find the text editor you’re using to display Windows files in Ubuntu shows ^M instead of a line break (not very likely with even the most lightweight text editors, but something you’ll probably come across if you display the text in a terminal), don’t worry – just convert them to Unix/Linux format.

While you can actually open them in Gedit and use Save As… to save over them (or to create copies) in the correct format, for more than a couple of files this would be the long, complicated solution.

By far the quickest and easiest approach is to convert the offending files via the command-line. This way, you could batch-convert hundreds of such files at once, not have to do them individually.
There are actually quite a few ways to do this, but we’ll look at a couple of tiny packages you can install, and the related commands to use.

The first – the tofrodos package – is undoubtedly the most widely-used, so we’ll look at that in detail – especially since many of the guides out there are outdated, since the commands it contains have been renamed.

The second is a little package called flip, and since it’s tiny and won’t cause any issues, it’s worth installing as a backup (just in case. I found it useful after trying to get tofrodos going on a new system, before I found out the commands were changed).

There is no actual command tofrodos, as it is just the package that contains the commands todos and fromdos. Currently, the vast majority of online guides will list the commands as unix2dos and dos2unix, but as the developer states:

With this release the symlinks “unix2dos” and “dos2unix” are dropped from the package. This will allow the introduction of the original dos2unix package, which also supports conversion to MacOS style files.

So now you can choose to use either todos (to convert to Windows) and fromdos (to convert to Linux), or just fromdos with options (fromdos -u to convert to DOS, and fromdos -d to convert to UNIX, though obviously the -d option really isn’t needed, as it is the default behaviour for the fromdos command).

We’ll use fromdos, as it is easier to remember, and show how to alter a single file, or all text files in a given folder. When you’re ready to proceed, open a terminal in the folder containing the text file(s) and use one of the following commands (note that for the purpose of illustration, the .txt suffix is used, but you can specify any other extension for your text files).

To Convert to UNIX/Linux via Terminal:

Single file (remember to replace filename.txt with the actual name of the file)

fromdos filename.txt

All text files in a folder (if the extension differs to .txt, simply replace it in the command)

fromdos *.txt

Similarly, flip is easy to use:

flip -u filename.txt (or flip -u *.txt for multiple files)

Converting Windows EOL to Linux with Gedit

It’s actually very easy to convert text files with Windows EOL to Unix/Linux in Ubuntu using the default Text Editor, Gedit. Simply open the files, choose Save As…, go to Line Ending in the dialogue box and choose Unix/Linux instead of Windows. While that is easy enough, for more than one or two you’d really want to save yourself some time and hassle and perform a batch-conversion via the terminal.

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Did this information make your day? Did it rescue you from hours of headache? Then please consider making a donation via PayPal, to buy me a donut, beer, or some fish’n’chips for my time and effort! Many thanks!

You may ask yourself, what is the purpose of this article? Why convert a Windows file to adapt to a UNIX environment like Linux? Isn’t Linux all-powerful? The exceptional capabilities of the Linux operating system do not spare it from incompatible displays of files transferred from other computing platforms.

Just because you can open a file on a Linux environment does not imply that you have full control over how the file’s texts should be displayed.

[ You might also like: How to Find Files Containing Specific Text String in Linux ]

You will encounter instances where a file’s texts or words are jammed together on a single giant line. In other instances, the same file texts’ displays might not have line breaks or sentence spacing.

A common attribute of raw Windows files opened in UNIX systems like Linux is the unavoidable end-of-line display of ^M or Ctrl-M characters.

This article guide seeks to achieve one objective; the conversion of a Windows File to a UNIX file without changing the format of the resulting file.

Ways to Convert Windows File to Unix Format in Linux

We can achieve the objective of our article through several methods. These methods allow us to convert a Windows file to a UNIX file and still retain the original format of the Windows file.

Convert Windows File to Unix Using dos2unix Command

Depending on your Linux operating system distribution, you can install the dos2unix command-line tool from one of the following commands:

$ sudo apt-get install dos2unix     [On Debian, Ubuntu and Mint]
$ sudo yum install dos2unix         [On RHEL/CentOS/Fedora and Rocky Linux/AlmaLinux]
$ sudo emerge -a sys-apps/dos2unix  [On Gentoo Linux]
$ sudo pacman -S dos2unix           [On Arch Linux]
$ sudo zypper install dos2unix      [On OpenSUSE]    

The command syntax for using the dos2unix tool is as follows:

$ dos2unix Your_Windows_File Final_Unix_File

So if you have a sample file created on a Windows computing system and want to open it on a Linux computing system without compromising its format, you would use the following command.

$ dos2unix windows_readme.txt unix_readme.txt

Before we run the above command, we need to create a blank unix_readme.txt file that will accommodate the converted file.

$ touch unix_readme.txt
$ dos2unix windows_readme.txt unix_readme.txt    

As per the screen capture, your converted Windows file should comfortably adapt to any Unix environment.

Using AWK Command – Convert Windows File to Unix

The awk command is pre-installed on all modern full-fledged UNIX computing systems like Linux. To convert our sample Windows file, we would implement the awk command in the following manner:

$ awk '{ sub("r$", ""); print }' windows_readme.txt > new_unix_readme.txt

As you have noted, with the awk command, we don’t need a pre-existing blank Linux file to accommodate the converted Windows file. The command creates and populates the Unix file version of the Windows file on its own.

Using tr Command – Convert Windows File to Unix

If most of the Windows files you open on your Linux environment have unnecessary Ctrl-Z and carriage return characters, then you will appreciate what the tr command has to offer.

Supposing our sample Windows file is a victim of such characters, removing them will require implementing the following command:

$ tr -d '' < windows_readme.txt > polished_unix_readme.txt

The inbuilt nature of the tr command also generates the resulting UNIX file without the need for its pre-creation.

The flexibility of the three discussed approaches to converting any editable Windows file to UNIX file format should save you from the headaches of having to manually edit your downloaded or transferred Windows files to remove unwanted characters and spaces while on a Linux environment.

Yup, exactly. sed is not a binary stream editor (though you still can).

Edit: Curiosity got the better of me:

> file dos.txt
dos.txt: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators
> od -a dos.txt 
0000000   d   o   s  sp   l   i   n   e  sp   1  cr  nl   d   o   s  sp
0000020   l   i   n   e  sp   2  cr  nl
0000030
> cat dos.txt | sed ':a;N;s/rn/nr/;ta' > flip.txt
> od -a flip.txt 
0000000   d   o   s  sp   l   i   n   e  sp   1  nl  cr   d   o   s  sp
0000020   l   i   n   e  sp   2  cr  nl
0000030
> file flip.txt 
flip.txt: ASCII text, with CRLF, CR, LF line terminators

Edit 2: Yes, I noticed that. I’m fixing it.

Edit 3: tr is still the man. Bad sed, no cookie:

> file dos.txt
dos.txt: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators
> od -a dos.txt 
0000000   d   o   s  sp   l   i   n   e  sp   1  cr  nl   d   o   s  sp
0000020   l   i   n   e  sp   2  cr  nl
0000030
> cat dos.txt | tr 'rn' 'nr' > flip.txt
> od -a flip.txt 
0000000   d   o   s  sp   l   i   n   e  sp   1  nl  cr   d   o   s  sp
0000020   l   i   n   e  sp   2  nl  cr
0000030
> file flip.txt 
flip.txt: ASCII text, with CR, LF line terminators

The other edit kept for posterity.

Last edited by fsckd (2009-11-10 15:43:03)

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