dos2unix [options] [FILE ...] [-n INFILE OUTFILE ...] unix2dos [options] [FILE ...] [-n INFILE OUTFILE ...]
In DOS/Windows text files a line break, also known as newline, is a combination of two characters: a Carriage Return (CR) followed by a Line Feed (LF). In Unix text files a line break is a single character: the Line Feed (LF). In Mac text files, prior to Mac OS X, a line break was single Carriage Return (CR) character. Nowadays Mac OS uses Unix style (LF) line breaks.
Besides line breaks Dos2unix can also convert the encoding of files. A few DOS code pages can be converted to Unix Latin-1. And Windows Unicode (UTF-16) files can be converted to Unix Unicode (UTF-8) files.
Binary files are automatically skipped, unless conversion is forced.
Non-regular files, such as directories and FIFOs, are automatically skipped.
Symbolic links and their targets are by default kept untouched. Symbolic links can optionally be replaced, or the output can be written to the symbolic link target. Writing to a symbolic link target is not supported on Windows.
Dos2unix was modelled after dos2unix under SunOS/Solaris. There is one important difference with the original SunOS/Solaris version. This version does by default in-place conversion (old file mode), while the original SunOS/Solaris version only supports paired conversion (new file mode). See also options "-o" and "-n".
dos2unix -- -foo
Or in new file mode:
dos2unix -n -- -foo out.txt
The following information is printed, in this order: number of DOS line breaks, number of Unix line breaks, number of Mac line breaks, byte order mark, text or binary, file name.
6 0 0 no_bom text dos.txt 0 6 0 no_bom text unix.txt 0 0 6 no_bom text mac.txt 6 6 6 no_bom text mixed.txt 50 0 0 UTF-16LE text utf16le.txt 0 50 0 no_bom text utf8unix.txt 50 0 0 UTF-8 text utf8dos.txt 2 418 219 no_bom binary dos2unix.exe
Optionally extra flags can be set to change the output. One or more flags can be added.
With the "c" flag dos2unix will print only the files that contain DOS line breaks, unix2dos will print only file names that have Unix line breaks.
Show information for all *.txt files:
dos2unix -i *.txt
Show only the number of DOS line breaks and Unix line breaks:
dos2unix -idu *.txt
Show only the byte order mark:
dos2unix --info=b *.txt
List the files that have DOS line breaks.
dos2unix -ic *.txt
List the files that have Unix line breaks.
unix2dos -ic *.txt
dos2unix: Only DOS line breaks are changed to two Unix line breaks. In Mac mode only Mac line breaks are changed to two Unix line breaks.
unix2dos: Only Unix line breaks are changed to two DOS line breaks. In Mac mode Unix line breaks are changed to two Mac line breaks.
When the input file is UTF-16, and the option "-u" is used, an UTF-16 BOM will be written.
Never use this option when the output encoding is other than UTF-8 or UTF-16. See also section UNICODE.
The person who starts the conversion in new file (paired) mode will be the owner of the converted file. The read/write permissions of the new file will be the permissions of the original file minus the umask(1) of the person who runs the conversion.
In old file (in-place) mode the converted file gets the same owner, group, and read/write permissions as the original file. Also when the file is converted by another user who has write permissions on the file (e.g. user root). The conversion will be aborted when it is not possible to preserve the original values. Change of owner could mean that the original owner is not able to read the file any more. Change of group could be a security risk, the file could be made readable for persons for whom it is not intended. Preservation of owner, group, and read/write permissions is only supported on Unix.
When there is a Byte Order Mark in the input file the BOM has priority over this option.
When you made a wrong assumption (the input file was not in UTF-16LE format) and the conversion succeeded, you will get an UTF-8 output file with wrong text. You can undo the wrong conversion with iconv(1) by converting the UTF-8 output file back to UTF-16LE. This will bring back the original file.
The assumption of UTF-16LE works as a conversion mode. By switching to the default ascii mode the UTF-16LE assumption is turned off.
This option works the same as option "-ul".
In Mac mode line breaks are converted from Mac to Unix and vice versa. DOS line breaks are not changed.
To run in Mac mode use the command-line option "-c mac" or use the commands "mac2unix" or "unix2mac".
Although the name of this mode is ASCII, which is a 7 bit standard, the actual mode is 8 bit. Use always this mode when converting Unicode UTF-8 files.
When only option "-iso" is used dos2unix will try to determine the active code page. When this is not possible dos2unix will use default code page CP437, which is mainly used in the USA. To force a specific code page use options "-437" (US), "-850" (Western European), "-860" (Portuguese), "-863" (French Canadian), or "-865" (Nordic). Windows code page CP1252 (Western European) is also supported with option "-1252". For other code pages use dos2unix in combination with iconv(1). Iconv can convert between a long list of character encodings.
Never use ISO conversion on Unicode text files. It will corrupt UTF-8 encoded files.
Convert from DOS default code page to Unix Latin-1
dos2unix -iso -n in.txt out.txt
Convert from DOS CP850 to Unix Latin-1
dos2unix -850 -n in.txt out.txt
Convert from Windows CP1252 to Unix Latin-1
dos2unix -1252 -n in.txt out.txt
Convert from Windows CP1252 to Unix UTF-8 (Unicode)
iconv -f CP1252 -t UTF-8 in.txt | dos2unix > out.txt
Convert from Unix Latin-1 to DOS default code page
unix2dos -iso -n in.txt out.txt
Convert from Unix Latin-1 to DOS CP850
unix2dos -850 -n in.txt out.txt
Convert from Unix Latin-1 to Windows CP1252
unix2dos -1252 -n in.txt out.txt
Convert from Unix UTF-8 (Unicode) to Windows CP1252
unix2dos < in.txt | iconv -f UTF-8 -t CP1252 > out.txt
See also <http://czyborra.com/charsets/codepages.html> and <http://czyborra.com/charsets/iso8859.html>.
All versions of dos2unix and unix2dos can convert UTF-8 encoded files, because UTF-8 was designed for backward compatibility with ASCII.
Dos2unix and unix2dos with Unicode UTF-16 support, can read little and big endian UTF-16 encoded text files. To see if dos2unix was built with UTF-16 support type "dos2unix -V".
UTF-16 encoded files are by default converted to UTF-8. On Unix/Linux it is required that the locale character encoding is set to UTF-8. Use the locale(1) command to find out what the locale character encoding is. UTF-8 formatted text files are well supported on both Windows and Unix/Linux.
UTF-16 and UTF-8 encoding are fully compatible, there will no text be lost in the conversion. When an UTF-16 to UTF-8 conversion error occurs, for instance when the UTF-16 input file contains an error, the file will be skipped.
When option "-u" is used, the output file will be written in the same UTF-16 encoding as the input file. Option "-u" prevents conversion to UTF-8.
Dos2unix and unix2dos have no option to convert UTF-8 files to UTF-16.
ISO and 7-bit mode conversion do not work on UTF-16 files.
On Unix Unicode files typically don't have a BOM. It is assumed that text files are encoded in the locale character encoding.
Dos2unix can only detect if a file is in UTF-16 format if the file has a BOM. When an UTF-16 file doesn't have a BOM, dos2unix will see the file as a binary file.
Use option "-ul" or "-ub" to convert an UTF-16 file without BOM.
Dos2unix writes by default no BOM in the output file. With option "-b" Dos2unix writes a BOM when the input file has a BOM.
Unix2dos writes by default a BOM in the output file when the input file has a BOM. Use option "-r" to remove the BOM.
Dos2unix and unix2dos write always a BOM when option "-m" is used.
dos2unix -n in.txt out.txt
Convert from Windows UTF-16LE (without BOM) to Unix UTF-8
dos2unix -ul -n in.txt out.txt
Convert from Unix UTF-8 to Windows UTF-8 with BOM
unix2dos -m -n in.txt out.txt
Convert from Unix UTF-8 to Windows UTF-16
unix2dos < in.txt | iconv -f UTF-8 -t UTF-16 > out.txt
dos2unix dos2unix -l -c mac
Convert and replace a.txt. Convert and replace b.txt.
dos2unix a.txt b.txt dos2unix -o a.txt b.txt
Convert and replace a.txt in ascii conversion mode.
Convert and replace a.txt in ascii conversion mode. Convert and replace b.txt in 7bit conversion mode.
dos2unix a.txt -c 7bit b.txt dos2unix -c ascii a.txt -c 7bit b.txt dos2unix -ascii a.txt -7 b.txt
Convert a.txt from Mac to Unix format.
dos2unix -c mac a.txt mac2unix a.txt
Convert a.txt from Unix to Mac format.
unix2dos -c mac a.txt unix2mac a.txt
Convert and replace a.txt while keeping original date stamp.
dos2unix -k a.txt dos2unix -k -o a.txt
Convert a.txt and write to e.txt.
dos2unix -n a.txt e.txt
Convert a.txt and write to e.txt, keep date stamp of e.txt same as a.txt.
dos2unix -k -n a.txt e.txt
Convert and replace a.txt. Convert b.txt and write to e.txt.
dos2unix a.txt -n b.txt e.txt dos2unix -o a.txt -n b.txt e.txt
Convert c.txt and write to e.txt. Convert and replace a.txt. Convert and replace b.txt. Convert d.txt and write to f.txt.
dos2unix -n c.txt e.txt -o a.txt b.txt -n d.txt f.txt
find . -name *.txt |xargs dos2unix
export LANG=nl Dutch export LANG=nl_NL Dutch, The Netherlands export LANG=nl_BE Dutch, Belgium export LANG=es_ES Spanish, Spain export LANG=es_MX Spanish, Mexico export LANG=en_US.iso88591 English, USA, Latin-1 encoding export LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 English, UK, UTF-8 encoding
For a complete list of language and country codes see the gettext manual: <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html#Language-Codes>
On Unix systems you can use to command locale(1) to get locale specific information.
If you select a language which is not available you will get the standard English messages.
Example (POSIX shell):
The return value is always zero in quiet mode, except when wrong command-line options are used.
Project page: <http://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/dos2unix.html>
SourceForge page: <http://sourceforge.net/projects/dos2unix/>