remove CR + trailing spaces

[Dan van Ginhoven]

Hi!

I had some files on my Linux server containing Dos/Win style CRLF and also
trailing spaces on most lines.

I ran this one-liner perl on them:
cat localfn | perl -p -e "s/\r//;s/\s*$//;" > tempname
To my surprise both CR and LF was removed and I ended up with a file with
just one long line.

When I changed the one-liner to
cat localfn | perl -p -e "s/\r//;s/\s*$/\n/;" > tempname
it came out OK.

What am I missing?
Can any point me to the appropriate FAQ or man page please.


/dg

 

[John W. Krahn]

I had some files on my Linux server containing Dos/Win style CRLF and also
trailing spaces on most lines.

I ran this one-liner perl on them:
cat localfn | perl -p -e "s/\r//;s/\s*$//;" > tempname
To my surprise both CR and LF was removed and I ended up with a file with
just one long line.

When I changed the one-liner to
cat localfn | perl -p -e "s/\r//;s/\s*$/\n/;" > tempname
it came out OK.

What am I missing?

The character class \s includes both the \r character and the \n
character.

perldoc perlre


You could simplify that to:

perl -lpe "s/\s+\z//" localfn > tempname


Or if you want to modify localfn "in-place":

perl -i.bak -lpe "s/\s+\z//" localfn



John

 

[Ben Morrow]

I had some files on my Linux server containing Dos/Win style CRLF and also
trailing spaces on most lines.

I ran this one-liner perl on them:
cat localfn | perl -p -e "s/\r//;s/\s*$//;" > tempname

Useless Use Of Cat.

perl ... < localfn > tempname

or use perl -i.

To my surprise both CR and LF was removed and I ended up with a file with
just one long line.

\s matches \n, so this will remove all LFs.

When I changed the one-liner to
cat localfn | perl -p -e "s/\r//;s/\s*$/\n/;" > tempname
it came out OK.

This will remove any blank lines, as well. You want

s/[\r\t ]+$//;

or (with 5.10)

s/[\r\h]+$//;

or use perl -l, which will remove the "\n" before doing the s///, and
add it back on afterwards.

Ben

 

[Dan van Ginhoven]

Thanks John.

 

[Dr.Ruud]

Dan van Ginhoven schreef:

cat localfn | perl -p -e "s/\r//;s/\s*$//;" > tempname
To my surprise both CR and LF was removed and I ended up with a file
with just one long line.

Consider [[:blank:]] in stead of \s.