How to insert line breaks on existing text file?

Question

I have an existing text file that is one long string. I would like to create a .bat script to insert a carriage return and line-feed after it finds ~.

For example, the original text file is:

This is a long string~which should be many lines~and yet it is not

The wanted output is:

This is a long string~
which should be many lines~
and yet it is not

See [How can you find and replace text in a file using the Windows command-line environment](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60034/how-can-you-find-and-replace-text-in-a-file-using-the-windows-command-line-envir) — Pedro Duarte, Oct 23 '17 at 21:31
Possible duplicate of [How can you find and replace text in a file using the Windows command-line environment?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60034/how-can-you-find-and-replace-text-in-a-file-using-the-windows-command-line-envir) — fvu, Oct 23 '17 at 21:33
I apologize since the formating didn't show up the way I wanted to. I wanted to return a new line after the tilde. Can use the post you reference and replace "~" with "~\r"? Is the return carriage "\r"? — Jerin Thenayan, Oct 23 '17 at 22:35

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 24 '17 at 00:22

I am not really sure how to do tilde replacement within a batch file because the tilde is a special character within the SET command for substrings.

But this should get you headed in the right direction.

@echo off
set "longline=This is a long string~which should be many lines~and yet it is not"

set count=1
:loop
FOR /F "tokens=1* delims=~" %%G IN ("%longline%") DO (
    SET "line%count%=%%G"
    set "longline=%%H"
    IF DEFINED longline (set /a count+=1 &goto loop)
)

FOR /L %%I IN (1,1,%count%) DO call echo %%line%%I%%

pause

Mofi · Answer 2 · 2018-04-05T17:27:40.017

First let me explain the three different types of line break/newline/line ending/line termination types.

There is carriage return with the escape sequence \r with hexadecimal code value 0D abbreviated with CR and line-feed with the escape sequence \n with hexadecimal code value 0A abbreviated with LF.

Text files on MS-DOS/Windows use CR+LF as newline.
Text files on Unix/Linux/MAC (since OS X) use just LF as newline.
Text files on MAC before OS X use just CR as newline.

So I suppose in real the task is to insert after tilde not just a carriage return, but a carriage return + line-feed.

The answers on How can you find and replace text in a file using the Windows command-line environment? offer many solutions for replacing strings in text files using Windows command line.

The first suggested solution is with using JREPL.BAT written by Dave Benham.

jrepl.bat "~" "~\r\n" /X /F "FileToModify.txt" /O -

This solution works for a text file containing the posted line and produce the expected output.

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 24 '17 at 06:46

I suppose you could also utilise PowerShell from your batch file too:

@If "%~1"=="" (Exit/B) Else If Not Exist "%~1" Exit/B
@Powershell -C "(GC '%~1') -Replace '~',\"`r`n\"|SC '%~1'"

The above accepts your input file as its argument, which means it could be as simple as a drag and drop job. The output file will be ASCII encoded by default.

How to insert line breaks on existing text file?

3 Answers3