I exported a CSV from excel to parse using python. When I opened the vimmed the CSV, I noticed that it was all one line with ^M characters where newlines should be.
Name, Value, Value2, OtherStuff ^M Name, Value, Value2, OtherStuff ^M
I have the file parsed such that I modify the values and put the into a string (using 'rU' mode in csvreader). However, the string has no newlines. So I am wondering, is there a way to split the string on this ^M character, or a way to replace it with a \n?
^M is how vim displays windows end-of-line's
The dos2unix command should fix those up for you:
dos2unix my_file.csv
It's due to the different EOL formats on Windows/Unix.
On windows, it's \r\n
On Unix/Linux/Mac, it's just \n
The ^M is actually vim showing you the windows CR (Carriage Return) or \r
The python open command documentation has more information on handling Universal Newlines: http://docs.python.org/2/library/functions.html#open
If you are on a unix system, there is a program called dos2unix (and its counterpart unix2dos) that will do exactly that conversion.
But, it is pretty much the same as something like this:
sed -i -e 's/$/\r/' file
