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

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3569997

01-10-2019
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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?

Solution

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.

OTHER TIPS

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 <filename> or just od -c <filename> to display the returns.

In the bash shell, try cat -v <filename>. 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.)}

Ubuntu 14.04:

simple cat -e <filename> works just fine.

This displays Unix line endings (\n or LF) as $ and Windows line endings (\r\n or CRLF) as ^M$.

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.

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 <filename> as @warriorpostman suggests.

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 "CR" it will just output text. (So if it does not explicitly mention any kind of line endings then this implicitly means: "CR line endings".)

Long version see below.

Real world application: 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 "certificate work" 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 "file" 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, "0.example.end.cer" 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 "regular" text file to be.)

(If you wanna share my mnemonic: "L" is for "Linux" and for "LF".)

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.

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

Try "file -k"

Real world application: Certificate Encoding

Further reading