Remove ^L character from a file

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hello,

I need to remove ^L character from a file as below:

 HELLO "I "
 HELLO "I "
^L HELLO "I"
 HELLO "I "
 HELLO "I "

Please suggest.

Thanks !!

2 
sed 's/^[ \^L]*//' file
3

Sorry, didnt work .... actually this character is only visible in vi editor. If we do cat it simply shows a space as below:

HELLO "I "
HELLO "I "
HELLO "I"
HELLO "I "
HELLO "I "

:frowning:

4

Try

awk '/^\014/{sub("\014","")}1' inputfile
5

$ awk '/^\014/{sub("\014","")}1' x
awk: syntax error near line 1
awk: illegal statement near line 1
awk: syntax error near line 1
awk: bailing out near line 1

:frowning:

6

Solaris???
Use /usr/xpg4/bin/awk instead of awk...

7

Thanks bro it worked :slight_smile: yeah its solaris .... Have to put it across 50 servers .. hope all of them have /usr/xpg4/bin/awk :slight_smile:

8

Ctrl/L is a Formfeed character.

The easiest way to remove them is with the tr command. Should be available on every version if unix.

cat inputfile | tr -d '\f' > outputfile
9

Hi,

I have seen this syntax a few times. Could you please explain, what's the "1" at the end of awk statement doing in this code snippet. Thanks.

10

It's a pattern (which is always true) without any action. You can replace it with any non-zero number. As the default action in awk is to print, this will output each input record (if control reaches there for that record).

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