How to delete ^M character using vi

Sometimes these characters are placed in a file during a DOS to UNIX conversion (these characters can only be viewed using an editor such as vi editor or using the cat –v command to view the file). To remove these characters, use the “tr –d” command to delete the control characters from the file (you may also use the :%s/.$// command in vi editor to delete ^M characters). After using “cat –v” to view the file, determine which control characters are present in the file. Refer to the ascii table (http://www.asciitable.com) to get the octal representation of the characters. The following is a brief list of Control characters octal representation: Oct Dec Hex Name 000 0 0x00 NUL 001 1 0x01 SOH, Control-A 002 2 0x02 STX, Control-B 003 3 0x03 ETX, Control-C 004 4 0x04 EOT, Control-D 005 5 0x05 ENQ, Control-E 006 6 0x06 ACK, Control-F 007 7 0x07 BEL, Control-G 010 8 0x08 BS, backspace, Control-H 011 9 0x09 HT, tab, Control-I 012 10 0x0a LF, line feed, newline, Control-J 013 11 0x0b VT, Control-K 014 12 0x0c FF, form feed, NP, Control-L 015 13 0x0d CR, carriage return, Control-M 016 14 0x0e SO, Control-N 017 15 0x0f SI, Control-O 020 16 0x10 DLE, Control-P 021 17 0x11 DC1, XON, Control-Q 022 18 0x12 DC2, Control-R 023 19 0x13 DC3, XOFF, Control-S 024 20 0x14 DC4, Control-T 025 21 0x15 NAK, Control-U 026 22 0x16 SYN, Control-V 027 23 0x17 ETB, Control-W 030 24 0x18 CAN, Control-X 031 25 0x19 EM, Control-Y 032 26 0x1a SUB, Control-Z For example, ^C is represented by “\003”, and ^M is represented by “\015”. Use the following command to remove ^M characters: tr -d "\015" newfile Example: tr –d “\015” goodfile.txt

There is a much easier way. In vi, do a :%s/^M//g To get the ^M hold the control key, press V then M (Both while holding the control key) and the ^M will appear. This will find all occurances and replace them with nothing. Hope this helps. Leigh

I Used :%s/^M/^M/g in Mac OS X in vi to replace the ^M 's with carriage returns. The first ^M is in capitals and the second in lowercase (though it appears as uppercase - wierd) This worked.