^M thing at the end of every line

emokid · Post by **emokid** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 2:13 pm

For some reason, there is a ^M character at the end of every line in a script. How can I get rid of all of them? (It's not 2 separate characters, ^M seems to be just one if I try to move my cursor to it, or press backspace it deletes ^M at the same time.)

YooHoo · Post by **YooHoo** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 2:20 pm

Sometimes certain characters(for eg.,^M characters)are placed in a file during a DOS to UNIX conversion. To modify these files with a lot of ^M symbol at the end of every line, using the vi editor, use the following command:

Code: Select all

:%s/^M//g

(To get the ^M hold the control key, press V then M (Both while holding the control key) and the ^M will appear.)
This command will find all occurances and replace them with nothing.
Here, the :%s is a basic search and replace command in vi. It tells vi to replace the regular expression between the first and second slashes (^M) with the text between the second and third slashes (nothing in this case). The g at the end directs vi to search and replace globally (all occurrences).

emokid · Post by **emokid** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 2:25 pm

Thanks, that did the trick!

But do you know why the ^M character appears during DOS to UNIX conversion? What's this symbol called and the story behind it?

speechles · Post by **speechles** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 2:59 pm

emokid wrote:Thanks, that did the trick!

But do you know why the ^M character appears during DOS to UNIX conversion? What's this symbol called and the story behind it?

ascii 13, hex 0d ; it's a carriage return marker...

A quick google pulled up this, probably helpful for you to tell other control-sets and their meanings.