end of the line character

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

How do i determine what the end of the line character is in a text file. for eg. is it \n or \f or \t etc..

Is there a unix command for this?

2

I'd do something like

head -1 myfile | od -ta

For a DOS file, you get

0000000   m   y   l   i   n   e   cr  nl

(cr = \r, nl = \n)

For a UNIX file, you get

0000000   m   y   l   i   n   e   nl

Cheers
ZB

3

file(1) will tell you, too.

4

thank you

5

AbEnd,
I didnt get it how you give your command on the file?

6

To quote from a manual page for a version of file included with recent Linux

At the command prompt....

For a standard UNIX file (LF (i.e. \n) terminators)
$ file my_file
my_file: ASCII text

For a DOS file ( \r\n terminators )
$ file my_file
my_file: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators

Cheers
ZB