Remove ^M from text file

Question

I have text file which shows ^M character when opened using less command in mac terminal. I tried using the below command to remove ^M character.

awk '{ gsub("\n", "\r"); print $0;}' input > output
cat input | tr ‘\n’ ‘\r’ > output

But none of them worked. Could someone help to fix this using some Linux commands.

The answers below tell you how to remove `^M`s as you requested, but they're wrong if you actually only want to remove the `^M` that appears at the end of a line for files with DOS line endings since they'll remove either the first `^M` or all `^M`s instead of just one that appears at the end of a line. To handle those correctly see [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45772525/why-does-my-tool-output-overwrite-itself-and-how-do-i-fix-it](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45772525/why-does-my-tool-output-overwrite-itself-and-how-do-i-fix-it). — Ed Morton, Nov 11 '21 at 17:09

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 05 '23 at 14:56

5

You can use sed:

 sed 's/^M//' filename > newfilename

If you wish to use awk then do:

awk '{sub(/^M/,"")}1' filename > newfilename

To enter ^M, type CTRL-V, then CTRL-M. That is, hold down the CTRL key then press V and M in succession.

Update

As suggested by @glenn jackman in comments, it is easy to use \r then to get ^M

edited Aug 05 '23 at 14:56

Dima Lituiev

answered Feb 25 '14 at 20:36

jaypal singh

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 25 '14 at 20:09

2

col < input > output

Or:

vim "+set ff=unix" "+saveas output" "+q" input

answered Feb 25 '14 at 20:09

Jonathan Wakely

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 18 '20 at 10:08

1

echo "1'2^M34" | awk 'gsub(/\015/,":")' 1'2:34

answered Nov 18 '20 at 10:08

Henry Barber

3 Answers3