Remove carriage return in Unix

Question

What is the simplest way to remove all the carriage returns \\r from a file in Unix?

Answer 1

If you're using an OS (like OS X) that doesn't have the dos2unix command but does have a Python interpreter (version 2.5+), this command is equivalent to the dos2unix command:

python -c "import sys; import fileinput; sys.stdout.writelines(line.replace('\r', '\n') for line in fileinput.input(mode='rU'))"

This handles both named files on the command line as well as pipes and redirects, just like dos2unix. If you add this line to your ~/.bashrc file (or equivalent profile file for other shells):

alias dos2unix="python -c \"import sys; import fileinput; sys.stdout.writelines(line.replace('\r', '\n') for line in fileinput.input(mode='rU'))\""

... the next time you log in (or run source ~/.bashrc in the current session) you will be able to use the dos2unix name on the command line in the same manner as in the other examples.