dos2unix

 

NAME

dos2unix − DOS/MAC to UNIX text file format converter

SYNOPSYS

dos2unix [options] [−c convmode] [−o file ...] [−n infile outfile ...]

Options:

[−fhkLlqV] [−−force] [−−help] [−−keepdate] [−−license] [−−newline] [−−quiet] [−−version]

DESCRIPTION

Dos2unix converts plain text files in DOS/MAC format to UNIX format. Binary files and non-regular files, such as soft links, are automatically skipped, unless conversion is forced.

Dos2unix has a few conversion modes similar to dos2unix under SunOS/Solaris.

In DOS/Windows text files line endings exist out of a combination of two characters: a Carriage Return (CR) followed by a Line Feed (LF). In Unix text files line endings exists out of a single Newline character which is equal to a DOS Line Feed (LF) character. In Mac text files, prior to Mac OS X, line endings exist out of a single Carriage Return character. Mac OS X is Unix based and has the same line endings as Unix.

OPTIONS

The following options are available:
−c −−convmode convmode

Set conversion mode. Where convmode is one of: ascii, 7bit, iso, mac with ascii being the default.

−f −−force

Force conversion of all files. Also binary files.

−h −−help

Display online help.

−k −−keepdate

Keep the date stamp of output file same as input file.

−L −−license

Display software license.

−l −−newline

Add additional newline. Only DOS line endings are changed to two Unix line endings. In Mac mode only Mac line endings are changed to two Unix line endings.

−n −−newfile infile outfile ...

New file mode. Convert the infile and write output to outfile. File names must be given in pairs and wildcard names should NOT be used or you WILL lose your files.

−o −−oldfile file ...

Old file mode. Convert the file and write output to it. The program default to run in this mode. Wildcard names may be used.

−q −−quiet

Quiet mode. Suppress all warning and messages.

−V −−version

Display version information.

CONVERSION MODES

Conversion modes ascii , 7bit , and iso are similar to those of dos2unix under SunOS/Solaris.

ascii

In this mode DOS line endings are converted to Unix line endings. Unix and Mac line endings are not changed.

Although the name of this mode is ASCII, which is a 7 bit standard, the actual mode is 8 bit.

	mac		In this mode Mac line endings are converted to Unix line endings. DOS and Unix line endigs are not changed.
	7bit		In this mode DOS line endings are converted to Unix line endings. All 8 bit non-ASCII characters (with values from 128 to 255) are converted to a space.
	iso		In this mode DOS line endings are converted to Unix line endings. Characters are converted from DOS character set (code page) CP437 to ISO character set ISO-8859-1. CP437 characters without ISO-8859-1 equivalent, for which conversion is not possible, are converted to a dot. CP437 is mainly used in the USA. In Western Europe CP850 is more standard.

Another option to convert text files between different encodings is to use dos2unix in combination with iconv(1). Iconv can convert between a long list of character encodings. Some examples:

Convert from DOS DOSLatinUS to Unix Latin-1

iconv −f CP437 −t ISO-8859-1 in.txt | dos2unix > out.txt

Convert from DOS DOSLatin1 to Unix Latin-1

iconv −f CP850 −t ISO-8859-1 in.txt | dos2unix > out.txt

Convert from Windows WinLatin1 to Unix Latin-1

iconv −f CP1252 −t ISO-8859-1 in.txt | dos2unix > out.txt

Convert from Windows WinLatin1 to Unix UTF-8 (Unicode)

iconv −f CP1252 −t UTF-8 in.txt | dos2unix > out.txt

Convert from Windows UTF-16 (Unicode) to Unix UTF-8 (Unicode)

iconv −f UTF-16 −t UTF-8 in.txt | dos2unix > out.txt

See also <http://czyborra.com/charsets/codepages.html>;
and <http://czyborra.com/charsets/iso8859.html>;.

UNICODE

Unicode files can be encoded in different encodings. On Unix/Linux Unicode files are mostly encoded in UTF-8 encoding. UTF-8 is ASCII compatible. UTF-8 files can be in DOS, Unix or Mac format. It is safe to run dos2unix/unix2dos on UTF-8 encoded files. On Windows mostly UTF-16 encoding is used for Unicode files. Dos2unix/unix2dos should not be run on UTF-16 files. UTF-16 files are automatically skipped, because it are binary files.

EXAMPLES

Get input from stdin and write output to stdout.

dos2unix

Convert and replace a.txt. Convert and replace b.txt.

dos2unix a.txt b.txt

dos2unix −o a.txt b.txt

Convert and replace a.txt in ascii conversion mode.

dos2unix a.txt

Convert and replace a.txt in ascii conversion mode. Convert and replace b.txt in 7bit conversion mode.

dos2unix a.txt −c 7bit b.txt

dos2unix −c ascii a.txt −c 7bit b.txt

Convert a.txt from Mac to Unix format.

dos2unix −c mac a.txt

mac2unix a.txt

Convert and replace a.txt while keeping original date stamp.

dos2unix −k a.txt

dos2unix −k −o a.txt

Convert a.txt and write to e.txt.

dos2unix −n a.txt e.txt

Convert a.txt and write to e.txt, keep date stamp of e.txt same as a.txt.

dos2unix −k −n a.txt e.txt

Convert and replace a.txt. Convert b.txt and write to e.txt.

dos2unix a.txt −n b.txt e.txt

dos2unix −o a.txt −n b.txt e.txt

Convert c.txt and write to e.txt. Convert and replace a.txt. Convert and replace b.txt. Convert d.txt and write to f.txt.

dos2unix −n c.txt e.txt −o a.txt b.txt −n d.txt f.txt