The ^M that followed you home from DOS/Windows
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One thing that I find very irritating is that DOS/Windows use cr/lf format for terminating a line, while Linux uses only the lf (cr=carriage return,lf=line feed). Many times when you copy a text file from DOS to your Linux system, the file will be littered with ^M (that's ctl-M) characters at the end of every line. An offending file might look like this:
0 | 1 | Axis X1^M 2 | 4 | Axis X2^M 4 | 16 | Button A^M 5 | 32 | Button B^M 6 | 64 | Button C^M 7 | 128 | Button D^M 12 | 4096 | Pad Button X^M 13 | 8192 | Pad Button Y^M 14 | 16384 | Pad Button U^M 15 | 32768 | Pad Button V^MTo get rid of them, use the fromdos command:
fromdos < DOSFILE.TXT > linuxfile.txtAnd the DOSFILE.TXT will be stripped of the annoyance and put in linuxfile.txt. Similarly, if you are using Linux in a windows camp and are finding that others can't read your text files, you can use the todos command to insert those ^M's for you like this:
todos < linuxfile.txt > DOSFILE.TXTUsing todos/fromdos you can make living in a Windows World a little easier for your Linux box.