Stripping Carriage Returns From Text Files

One of the problems with working on Linux and Windows OSes has to do with manipulating text files. Lines are separated by a carriage return and a line break character in text files on Windows, whereas on Linux, the separation is done through a single line break character.

When text files from Windows are opened in Linux, you often see ^M appearing at the end of lines like this:

Line 1^M Line 2^M

The easiest way to remove the carriage return characters (represented by ^M) is to use the dos2unix command. This lightweight program can be easily obtained on Debian-based systems with the command:

sudo apt-get install dos2unix

Other than using the dos2unix command, the fastest way to remove the carriage return characters is the following command:

cat file1.txt | tr -d '\r' > file2.txt