LF and CRs & editor

Question

In a previous postin, it was mentioned that for Unix executable files the LF should be used and not the CR. The member of the group gave me a Perl instruction to change the CR, or rather, perhaps to remove it. How can we "see" this instructions (if I remember correctly from my electronics days, they have a different ascII code ..) ?
Under Windows they mention Notepad ++ to do editing. I have started using SeaMonkey. Is there something more suitable ?
Thanks , Kevin

Answer 1

How can we "see" this instructions (if I remember correctly from my electronics days, they have a different ascII code ..) ?
You can use cat -e to 'see' the code. a '$' will be displayed as the end of line with a New Line ('$' is just an indicator, its not in the file).
For example. a new line will show as:
For example. a new line will show as$
If it has a CR, it would show as:
For example. a new line will show as^Mif it has a CR, it would show as^M
A CR is shown a ^M, there is no '$' (this is just an indicator, its not in the file)
You can also use tr to convert:
tr '\r' '\n' < macfile.txt > unixfile.txt
as well as awk
awk '{ gsub("\r", "\n"); print $0;}' macfile.txt > unixfile.txt
or perl
perl -p -e 's/\r/\n/g' < macfile.txt > unixfile.txt
see: http://kb.iu.edu/data/agiz.html