dos2unix - DOS/Mac to Unix and vice versa text file format converter
dos2unix [options] [FILE ...] [-n INFILE OUTFILE ...]
unix2dos [options] [FILE ...] [-n INFILE OUTFILE ...]
The Dos2unix package includes utilities dos2unix and unix2dos to convert
plain text files in DOS or Mac format to Unix format and vice versa.
In DOS/Windows text files a line break, also known as newline, is a combination of two characters: a Carriage Return (CR) followed by a Line Feed (LF). In Unix text files a line break is a single character: the Line Feed (LF). In Mac text files, prior to Mac OS X, a line break was single Carriage Return (CR) character. Nowadays Mac OS uses Unix style (LF) line breaks.
Binary files are automatically skipped, unless conversion is forced.
Non-regular files, such as directories and FIFOs, are automatically skipped.
Symbolic links and their targets are by default kept untouched. Symbolic links can optionally be replaced, or the output can be written to the symbolic link target. Symbolic links on Windows are not supported. Windows symbolic links always replaced, keeping the targets unchanged.
Dos2unix was modelled after dos2unix under SunOS/Solaris and has similar conversion modes.
Treat all following options as file names. Use this option if you want to convert files whose names start with a dash. For instance to convert a file named "-foo", you can use this command:
dos2unix -- -foo
Or in new file mode:
dos2unix -n -- -foo out.txt
Convert only line breaks. This is the default conversion mode.
Conversion between DOS and ISO-8859-1 character set. See also section CONVERSION MODES.
Use Windows code page 1252 (Western European).
Use DOS code page 437 (US). This is the default code page used for ISO conversion.
Use DOS code page 850 (Western European).
Use DOS code page 860 (Portuguese).
Use DOS code page 863 (French Canadian).
Use DOS code page 865 (Nordic).
Convert 8 bit characters to 7 bit space.
Set conversion mode. Where CONVMODE is one of: ascii, 7bit, iso, mac with ascii being the default.
Force conversion of binary files.
Display help and exit.
Keep the date stamp of output file same as input file.
Display program's license.
Add additional newline.
dos2unix: Only DOS line breaks are changed to two Unix line breaks. In Mac mode only Mac line breaks are changed to two Unix line breaks.
unix2dos: Only Unix line breaks are changed to two DOS line breaks. In Mac mode Unix line breaks are changed to two Mac line breaks.
New file mode. Convert file INFILE and write output to file OUTFILE. File names must be given in pairs and wildcard names should not be used or you will lose your files.
Old file mode. Convert file FILE and overwrite output to it. The program default to run in this mode. Wildcard names may be used.
Quiet mode. Suppress all warnings and messages. The return value is zero. Except when wrong command-line options are used.
Skip binary files (default).
Follow symbolic links and convert the targets.
Replace symbolic links with converted files (original target files remain unchanged).
Keep symbolic links and targets unchanged (default).
Display version information and exit.
In normal mode line breaks are converted from DOS to Unix and vice versa. Mac line breaks are not converted.
In Mac mode line breaks are converted from Mac to Unix and vice versa. DOS line breaks are not changed.
To run in Mac mode use the command-line option -c mac or use the
commands mac2unix or unix2mac.
Conversion modes ascii, 7bit, and iso are similar to those of dos2unix/unix2dos under SunOS/Solaris.
In mode ascii only line breaks are converted. This is the default
conversion mode.
Although the name of this mode is ASCII, which is a 7 bit standard, the actual mode is 8 bit. Use always this mode when converting Unicode UTF-8 files.
In this mode all 8 bit non-ASCII characters (with values from 128 to 255) are converted to a 7 bit space.
Characters are converted between a DOS character set (code page) and ISO character set ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) on Unix. DOS characters without ISO-8859-1 equivalent, for which conversion is not possible, are converted to a dot. The same counts for ISO-8859-1 characters without DOS counterpart.
When only option -iso is used dos2unix will try to determine the active code
page. When this is not possible dos2unix will use default code page CP437,
which is mainly used in the USA. To force a specific code page use options
-437 (US), -850 (Western European), -860 (Portuguese), -863 (French
Canadian), or -865 (Nordic). Windows code page CP1252 (Western European) is
also supported with option -1252. For other code pages use dos2unix in
combination with iconv(1). Iconv can convert between a long list of character
encodings.
Some examples:
Convert from DOS default code page to Unix Latin-1
dos2unix -iso -n in.txt out.txt
Convert from DOS CP850 to Unix Latin-1
dos2unix -850 -n in.txt out.txt
Convert from Windows CP1252 to Unix Latin-1
dos2unix -1252 -n in.txt out.txt
Convert from Windows CP1252 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
Convert from Unix Latin-1 to DOS default code page.
unix2dos -iso -n in.txt out.txt
Convert from Unix Latin-1 to DOS CP850
unix2dos -850 -n in.txt out.txt
Convert from Unix Latin-1 to Windows CP1252
unix2dos -1252 -n in.txt out.txt
Convert from Unix UTF-8 (Unicode) to Windows CP1252
unix2dos < in.txt | iconv -f UTF-8 -t CP1252 > out.txt
Convert from Unix UTF-8 (Unicode) to Windows UTF-16 (Unicode)
unix2dos < in.txt | iconv -f UTF-8 -t UTF-16 > out.txt
See also http://czyborra.com/charsets/codepages.html and http://czyborra.com/charsets/iso8859.html.
There exist different Unicode encodings. On Unix/Linux Unicode files are mostly encoded in UTF-8 encoding. UTF-8 is ASCII compatible. UTF-8 files can have DOS, Unix or Mac line breaks. 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 they are considered binary.
Read input from 'stdin' and write output to 'stdout'.
dos2unix
dos2unix -l -c mac
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
dos2unix -ascii a.txt -7 b.txt
Convert a.txt from Mac to Unix format.
dos2unix -c mac a.txt
mac2unix a.txt
Convert a.txt from Unix to Mac format.
unix2dos -c mac a.txt
unix2mac 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
The primary language is selected with the environment variable LANG. The LANG variable consists out of several parts. The first part is in small letters the language code. The second is optional and is the country code in capital letters, preceded with an underscore. There is also an optional third part: character encoding, preceded with a dot. A few examples for POSIX standard type shells:
export LANG=nl Dutch
export LANG=nl_NL Dutch, The Netherlands
export LANG=nl_BE Dutch, Belgium
export LANG=es_ES Spanish, Spain
export LANG=es_MX Spanish, Mexico
export LANG=en_US.iso88591 English, USA, Latin-1 encoding
export LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 English, UK, UTF-8 encoding
For a complete list of language and country codes see the gettext manual: http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html#Language-Codes
On Unix systems you can use to command locale(1) to get locale specific
information.
With the LANGUAGE environment variable you can specify a priority list of
languages, separated by colons. Dos2unix gives preference to LANGUAGE over LANG.
For instance, first Dutch and then German: LANGUAGE=nl:de. You have to first
enable localization, by setting LANG (or LC_ALL) to a value other than
"C", before you can use a language priority list through the LANGUAGE
variable. See also the gettext manual:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html#The-LANGUAGE-variable
If you select a language which is not available you will get the standard English messages.
With the environment variable DOS2UNIX_LOCALEDIR the LOCALEDIR set
during compilation can be overruled. LOCALEDIR is used to find the
language files. The GNU default value is /usr/local/share/locale.
Option --version will display the LOCALEDIR that is used.
Example (POSIX shell):
export DOS2UNIX_LOCALEDIR=$HOME/share/locale
On success, zero is returned. When a system error occurs the system error will be returned. For other errors 1 is returned.
The return value is always zero in quiet mode, except when wrong command-line options are used.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_file http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carriage_return http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline
Benjamin Lin - <blin@socs.uts.edu.au> Bernd Johannes Wuebben (mac2unix mode) - <wuebben@kde.org>, Christian Wurll (add extra newline) - <wurll@ira.uka.de>, Erwin Waterlander - <waterlan@xs4all.nl> (Maintainer)
Project page: http://www.xs4all.nl/~waterlan/dos2unix.html
SourceForge page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dos2unix/
Freshmeat: http://freshmeat.net/projects/dos2unix
file(1)
iconv(1)