Working with DOS

Visible formatting characters in DOS files on UnixWare systems

Note that DOS text files contain extra formatting characters that will show up on your screen. A line of text in a UNIX system file is terminated by a line feed character. In DOS files, a line is terminated by a line feed and a carriage return (^M). Because no attempt is made to change the nature of DOS files, the carriage return character is visible when editing a DOS file from the UNIX system partition. Thus when a DOS file that contains a series of numbers is opened using vi(1), it looks something like this:

   This is a DOS file.^M
   Note that each line ends in a spurious character^M
   like this.^M
   ~
   ~
   ~
   ~
   ~
   ~
   "TEST.TXT" 3 lines, 100 characters

© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
UnixWare 7 Release 7.1.4 - 22 April 2004