Re: [MLUG] text file cr/lf annoyance

[Mark Rages <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Wed, Oct 02, 2002 at 04:26:05PM -0500, Mike Miller wrote:
> I know of four different formats for text files:
> 
> source: http://ddl.jpl.nasa.gov/ddl/purpose/multiplat.pdf
> 
> IBM PC
>    This is a line of text.<CR><LF>
> Macintosh
>    This is a line of text.<CR>
> UNIX workstation
>    This is a line of text.<LF>
> VAX/VMS workstation
>    <LENGTH>This is a line of text.*
> 
> * This is the most common format supported under VMS.
> 
> 
> Which creates a crazy situation where I work because all four of these OSs
> are used here.  My most common problem is that I have IBM PC text files on
> a Unix machine.  This isn't a terrible problem because we have dos2unix to
> convert files.  On Solaris, I'd deal with it like this...
> 
> dos2unix -ascii originalfile convertedfile ; mv convertedfile originalfile

On my machine dos2unix will convert files in place if only passed one 
filename.

> 
> ...but who wants all that hassle?  How about something that works like
> this?:
> 
> d2u filename
> 
> Or better, something that can work with a list of filenames:
> 
> d2u a* www/bobstuff/*
> 
> So we could write a script.  I think perl can do this pretty efficiently
> so that we could avoid dos2unix and writing temp files.  What do you
> think?
> 
> It seems to me that this does what we want for an individual text file:
> 
> perl -pi -e 's/\015$//' filename
> 
> Is there an easy way to make this into a script that will take filenames
> (possibly with wildcards) as input?  It would be nice if it would work
> with wildcards exactly as ls works with them.
> 
> Mike

Well, based on your description, it would just be a small trick to
heuristically determine the input file format.  

Then you would need a switch to determine output format. Or look at 
argv[0] and react accordingly, a la busybox.
 
Binary files should be left unmolested unless a special binary switch is
used.  (because these conversions are irreversible for binary files!)

It would be impossible to write such a utility in Perl due to its limited 
flexibility and horrific syntax* 

Regards,
Mark

*Note to Mike: This inflammatory statement is included to induce the Perl 
geeks to immediately open vi and start coding...


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