Re: head and file with CR line terminators

[Michael Cook]

Beware, printing carriage returns to your terminal will tend to result in
puzzling output.
Best to pipe the output to `cat -A` to see what is actually being printed.

On Tue, Dec 26, 2023 at 12:27 PM Fred H Olson <fholson@cohousing.org> wrote:

> I forgot to mention. I am using version 8.5 of coreutils on old
> Ubuntu 16.04.  I dont know if this "feature" has been addressed
> in newer versions.  If so, sorry.
>
> Also another new comment at end of message...
>
> On Tue, 26 Dec 2023, Fred H Olson wrote:
>
> > I'm using the command:
> > head -n1
> > on all the 12,000+ text files in my system (!)
> >
> > I have a few with CR line terminators (old Mac files?).
> > I used the command "file" to identify and make a list of text files
> > and created a long linear (12000+ lines) script that does something like:
> >
> > head -n1 <filename1>
> > head -n1 <filename2>
> > etc
> >
> > With this script, if a file has CR line terminators all of
> > the file is printed instead of just the first CR terminated line.
> >
> > From the command line with such a file
> > head -n1 <filename>
> > for one example file that command prints about 100 characters with
> > snippets (10-32 characters long from 6 various CR terminated lines
> > (none of the first (CR) line) is printed.
> >
> > Is there a way (short of reformating such files) to get head to
> > display just one CR terminated line?
> >
> > For now I'll try treating CR terminated lines separately and just print
> > a limited number of bytes.
> >
> > I use my own system of organizing text files and having hyperlink like
> > links between them and am trying to develop a way to make a list such
> > files. I use some "magic" like strings mostly on line one and may try
> > teaching "file" to identify them but for now am examining the first
> > lines of text files
> >
> > I do not subscribe to this list so a direct cc of replies would be
> > appreciated.
>
> Also I have since tried above (on file with CR terminated lines )
> head -n<num> <filename>
> if num is big enough to span multiple CR terminated lines
> some of the printed text can be after the next command prompt.  Weird.
> I have not tried this in a script yet.
>
> FRed
>
> --
> Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
>      Email:        fholson at cohousing.org      612-588-9532
> My Link Pg: http://fholson.cohousing.org
>
>