How to find out line-endings in a text file

Question

I m trying to use something in bash to show me the line endings in a file printed rather than interpreted  The file is a dump from SSIS SQL Server being read in by a Linux machine for processing    Are there any switches within vi  less  more  etc  In addition to seeing the line-endings  I need to know what type of line end it is  CRLF or LF   How do I find that out

User · Accepted Answer

You can use the file utility to give you an indication of the type of line endings   Unix     file testfile1 txt testfile txt  ASCII text    DOS      file testfile2 txt testfile2 txt  ASCII text  with CRLF line terminators   To convert from  DOS  to Unix     dos2unix testfile2 txt   To convert from Unix to  DOS      unix2dos testfile1 txt   Converting an already converted file has no effect so it s safe to run blindly  i e  without testing the format first  although the usual disclaimers apply  as always

User · Answer

I dump my output to a text file  I then open it in notepad    then click the show all characters button  Not very elegant but it works

User · Answer

Try file then file -k then dos2unix -ih file will usually be enough  But for tough cases try file -k or dosunix -ih  Details below   Try file -k Short version  file -k somefile txt will tell you   It will output with CRLF line endings for DOS Windows line endings  It will output with LF line endings for MAC line endings  And for Linux Unix line  quot CR quot  it will just output text   So if it does not explicitly mention any kind of line endings then this implicitly means   quot CR line endings quot     Long version see below   Real world example  Certificate Encoding I sometimes have to check this for PEM certificate files  The trouble with regular file is this  Sometimes it s trying to be too smart too specific  Let s try a little quiz  I ve got some files  And one of these files has different line endings  Which one   By the way  this is what one of my typical  quot certificate work quot  directories looks like   Let s try regular file    file --   0 example end cer          PEM certificate 0 example end key          PEM RSA private key 1 example int cer          PEM certificate 2 example root cer         PEM certificate example opensslconfig ini  ASCII text example req                PEM certificate request  Huh  It s not telling me the line endings  And I already knew that those were cert files  I didn t need  quot file quot  to tell me that  What else can you try  You might try dos2unix with the --info switch like this    dos2unix --info --     37       0       0  no bom    text    0 example end cer    0      27       0  no bom    text    0 example end key    0      28       0  no bom    text    1 example int cer    0      25       0  no bom    text    2 example root cer    0      35       0  no bom    text    example opensslconfig ini    0      19       0  no bom    text    example req  So that tells you that  yup   quot 0 example end cer quot  must be the odd man out  But what kind of line endings are there  Do you know the dos2unix output format by heart   I don t   But fortunately there s the --keep-going  or -k for short  option in file    file --keep-going --   0 example end cer          PEM certificate 012-   ASCII text  with CRLF line terminators 012- data 0 example end key          PEM RSA private key 012-   ASCII text 012- data 1 example int cer          PEM certificate 012-   ASCII text 012- data 2 example root cer         PEM certificate 012-   ASCII text 012- data example opensslconfig ini  ASCII text 012- data example req                PEM certificate request 012-   ASCII text 012- data  Excellent  Now we know that our odd file has DOS  CRLF  line endings   And the other files have Unix  LF  line endings  This is not explicit in this output  It s implicit  It s just the way file expects a  quot regular quot  text file to be    If you wanna share my mnemonic   quot L quot  is for  quot Linux quot  and for  quot LF quot    Now let s convert the culprit and try again    dos2unix -- 0 example end cer    file --keep-going --   0 example end cer          PEM certificate 012-   ASCII text 012- data 0 example end key          PEM RSA private key 012-   ASCII text 012- data 1 example int cer          PEM certificate 012-   ASCII text 012- data 2 example root cer         PEM certificate 012-   ASCII text 012- data example opensslconfig ini  ASCII text 012- data example req                PEM certificate request 012-   ASCII text 012- data    Good  Now all certs have Unix line endings  Try dos2unix -ih I didn t know this when I was writing the example above but  Actually it turns out that dos2unix will give you a header line if you use -ih  short for --info h  like so    dos2unix -ih --    DOS    UNIX     MAC  BOM       TXTBIN  FILE    0      37       0  no bom    text    0 example end cer    0      27       0  no bom    text    0 example end key    0      28       0  no bom    text    1 example int cer    0      25       0  no bom    text    2 example root cer    0      35       0  no bom    text    example opensslconfig ini    0      19       0  no bom    text    example req  And another  quot actually quot  moment  The header format is really easy to remember  Here s two mnemonics   It s DUMB  left to right  d for Dos  u for Unix  m for Mac  b for BOM   And also   quot DUM quot  is just the alphabetical ordering of D  U and M   Further reading  man file man dos2unix Wikipedia  Newline

User · Answer

You may use the command todos filename to convert to DOS endings  and fromdos filename to convert to UNIX line endings  To install the package on Ubuntu  type sudo apt-get install tofrodos

User · Answer

In the bash shell  try cat -v  lt filename gt    This should display carriage-returns for windows files      This worked for me in rxvt via Cygwin on Windows XP    Editor s note  cat -v visualizes  r  CR  chars  as  M  Thus  line-ending  r n sequences will display as  M at the end of each output line  cat -e will additionally visualize  n  namely as     cat -et will additionally visualize tab chars  as  I

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Ubuntu 14 04    simple cat -e  lt filename gt  works just fine    This displays Unix line endings   n or LF  as   and Windows line endings   r n or CRLF  as  M

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To show CR as  M in less use less -u or type -u once less is open   man less says    -u or --underline-special        Causes backspaces and carriage returns to be treated  as  print-       able  characters   that  is   they are sent to the terminal when       they appear in the input

User · Answer

You can use xxd to show a hex dump of the file  and hunt through for  0d0a  or  0a  chars   You can use cat -v  lt filename gt  as  warriorpostman suggests

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In vi      set list to see line-endings    set nolist to go back to normal   While I don t think you can see  n or  r n in vi  you can see which type of file it is  UNIX  DOS  etc   to infer which line endings it has      set ff   Alternatively  from bash you can use od -t c  lt filename gt  or just od -c  lt filename gt  to display the returns

User · Answer

You can use vim -b filename to edit a file in binary mode  which will show  M characters for carriage return and a new line is indicative of LF being present  indicating Windows CRLF line endings   By LF I mean  n and by CR I mean  r  Note that when you use the -b option the file will always be edited in UNIX mode by default as indicated by  unix  in the status line  meaning that if you add new lines they will end with LF  not CRLF   If you use normal vim without -b on a file with CRLF line endings  you should see  dos  shown in the status line and inserted lines will have CRLF as end of line   The vim documentation for fileformats setting explains the complexities   Also  I don t have enough points to comment on the Notepad   answer  but if you use Notepad   on Windows  use the View   Show Symbol   Show End of Line menu to display CR and LF   In this case LF is shown whereas for vim the LF is indicated by a new line

User · Answer

Vim - always show Windows newlines as  M  If you prefer to always see the Windows newlines in vim render as  M  you can add this line to your  vimrc   set ffs unix   This will make vim interpret every file you open as a unix file  Since unix files have  n as the newline character  a windows file with a newline character of  r n will still render properly  thanks to the  n  but will have  M at the end of the file  which is how vim renders the  r character      Vim - sometimes show Windows newlines  If you d prefer just to set it on a per-file basis  you can use  e   ff unix when editing a given file     Vim - always show filetype  unix vs dos   If you want the bottom line of vim to always display what filetype you re editing  and you didn t force set the filetype to unix  you can add to your statusline with set statusline       amp fileencoding  amp fileencoding  amp encoding    My full statusline is provided below  Just add it to your  vimrc      Make statusline stay  otherwise alerts will hide it set laststatus 2 set statusline  set statusline    PmenuSel  set statusline    LineNr    This says  show filename and parent dir  set statusline    expand    p h t     t   This says  show filename as would be read from the cwd    set statusline     f set statusline   m  set statusline     set statusline    CursorColumn  set statusline     y set statusline       amp fileencoding  amp fileencoding  amp encoding  set statusline       amp fileformat    set statusline     p   set statusline     l  c set statusline       It ll render like   vim vimrc                                      vim  utf-8 unix  77  315 6   at the bottom of your file    Vim - sometimes show filetype  unix vs dos   If you just want to see what type of file you have  you can use  set fileformat  this will not work if you ve force set the filetype   It will return unix for unix files and dos for Windows

[linux] How to find out line-endings in a text file?

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