NAME
    dos2unix - DOS/Mac to Unix and vice versa text file format converter

SYNOPSIS
        dos2unix [options] [FILE ...] [-n INFILE OUTFILE ...]
        unix2dos [options] [FILE ...] [-n INFILE OUTFILE ...]

DESCRIPTION
    The Dos2unix package includes utilities "dos2unix" and "unix2dos" to
    convert plain text files in DOS or Mac format to Unix format and vice
    versa.

    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".

OPTIONS
    --  Treat all following options as file names. Use this option if you
        want to convert files whose names start with a dash. For instance to
        convert a file named "-foo", you can use this command:

            dos2unix -- -foo

        Or in new file mode:

            dos2unix -n -- -foo out.txt

    -ascii
        Convert only line breaks. This is the default conversion mode.

    -iso
        Conversion between DOS and ISO-8859-1 character set. See also
        section CONVERSION MODES.

    -1252
        Use Windows code page 1252 (Western European).

    -437
        Use DOS code page 437 (US). This is the default code page used for
        ISO conversion.

    -850
        Use DOS code page 850 (Western European).

    -860
        Use DOS code page 860 (Portuguese).

    -863
        Use DOS code page 863 (French Canadian).

    -865
        Use DOS code page 865 (Nordic).

    -7  Convert 8 bit characters to 7 bit space.

    -b, --keep-bom
        Keep Byte Order Mark (BOM). When the input file has a BOM, write a
        BOM in the output file. This is the default behavior when converting
        to DOS line breaks. See also option "-r".

    -c, --convmode CONVMODE
        Set conversion mode. Where CONVMODE is one of: *ascii*, *7bit*,
        *iso*, *mac* with ascii being the default.

    -f, --force
        Force conversion of binary files.

    -h, --help
        Display help and exit.

    -k, --keepdate
        Keep the date stamp of output file same as input file.

    -L, --license
        Display program's license.

    -l, --newline
        Add additional newline.

        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.

    -m, --add-bom
        Write an UTF-8 Byte Order Mark in the output file. Never use this
        option when the output encoding is other than UTF-8. See also
        section UNICODE.

    -n, --newfile INFILE OUTFILE ...
        New file mode. Convert file INFILE and write output to file OUTFILE.
        File names must be given in pairs and wildcard names should *not* be
        used or you *will* lose your files.

        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.

    -o, --oldfile FILE ...
        Old file mode. Convert file FILE and overwrite output to it. The
        program defaults to run in this mode. Wildcard names may be used.

        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.

    -q, --quiet
        Quiet mode. Suppress all warnings and messages. The return value is
        zero. Except when wrong command-line options are used.

    -r, --remove-bom
        Remove Byte Order Mark (BOM). Do not write a BOM in the output file.
        This is the default behavior when converting to Unix line breaks.
        See also option "-b".

    -s, --safe
        Skip binary files (default).

    -ul, --assume-utf16le
        Assume that the input file format is UTF-16LE.

        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.

    -ub, --assume-utf16be
        Assume that the input file format is UTF-16BE.

        This option works the same as option "-ul".

    -F, --follow-symlink
        Follow symbolic links and convert the targets.

    -R, --replace-symlink
        Replace symbolic links with converted files (original target files
        remain unchanged).

    -S, --skip-symlink
        Keep symbolic links and targets unchanged (default).

    -V, --version
        Display version information and exit.

MAC MODE
    In normal mode line breaks are converted from DOS to Unix and vice
    versa. Mac line breaks are not converted.

    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".

CONVERSION MODES
    ascii
        In mode "ascii" only line breaks are converted. This is the default
        conversion mode.

        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.

    7bit
        In this mode all 8 bit non-ASCII characters (with values from 128 to
        255) are converted to a 7 bit space.

    iso Characters are converted between a DOS character set (code page) and
        ISO character set ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) on Unix. DOS characters
        without ISO-8859-1 equivalent, for which conversion is not possible,
        are converted to a dot. The same counts for ISO-8859-1 characters
        without DOS counterpart.

        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.

        Some examples:

        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>.

UNICODE
  Encodings
    There exist different Unicode encodings. On Unix and Linux Unicode files
    are typically encoded in UTF-8 encoding. On Windows Unicode text files
    can be encoded in UTF-8, UTF-16, or UTF-16 big endian, but are mostly
    encoded in UTF-16 format.

  Conversion
    Unicode text files can have DOS, Unix or Mac line breaks, like regular
    text files.

    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".

    The Windows versions of dos2unix and unix2dos convert UTF-16 encoded
    files always to UTF-8 encoded files. Unix versions of dos2unix/unix2dos
    convert UTF-16 encoded files to the locale character encoding when it is
    set to UTF-8. Use the locale(1) command to find out what the locale
    character encoding is.

    Because UTF-8 formatted text files are well supported on both Windows
    and Unix, dos2unix and unix2dos have no option to write UTF-16 files.
    All UTF-16 characters can be encoded in UTF-8. Conversion from UTF-16 to
    UTF-8 is without loss. UTF-16 files will be skipped on Unix when the
    locale character encoding is not UTF-8, to prevent accidental loss of
    text. 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.

    ISO and 7-bit mode conversion do not work on UTF-16 files.

  Byte Order Mark
    On Windows Unicode text files typically have a Byte Order Mark (BOM),
    because many Windows programs (including Notepad) add BOMs by default.
    See also <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark>.

    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.

  Unicode examples
    Convert from Windows UTF-16 (with BOM) to Unix UTF-8

        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

EXAMPLES
    Read input from 'stdin' and write output to 'stdout'.

        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.

        dos2unix a.txt

    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

RECURSIVE CONVERSION
    Use dos2unix in combination with the find(1) and xargs(1) commands to
    recursively convert text files in a directory tree structure. For
    instance to convert all .txt files in the directory tree under the
    current directory type:

        find . -name *.txt |xargs dos2unix

LOCALIZATION
    LANG
        The primary language is selected with the environment variable LANG.
        The LANG variable consists out of several parts. The first part is
        in small letters the language code. The second is optional and is
        the country code in capital letters, preceded with an underscore.
        There is also an optional third part: character encoding, preceded
        with a dot. A few examples for POSIX standard type shells:

            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-Co
        des>

        On Unix systems you can use to command locale(1) to get locale
        specific information.

    LANGUAGE
        With the LANGUAGE environment variable you can specify a priority
        list of languages, separated by colons. Dos2unix gives preference to
        LANGUAGE over LANG. For instance, first Dutch and then German:
        "LANGUAGE=nl:de". You have to first enable localization, by setting
        LANG (or LC_ALL) to a value other than "C", before you can use a
        language priority list through the LANGUAGE variable. See also the
        gettext manual:
        <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html#The-LANGUAG
        E-variable>

        If you select a language which is not available you will get the
        standard English messages.

    DOS2UNIX_LOCALEDIR
        With the environment variable DOS2UNIX_LOCALEDIR the LOCALEDIR set
        during compilation can be overruled. LOCALEDIR is used to find the
        language files. The GNU default value is "/usr/local/share/locale".
        Option --version will display the LOCALEDIR that is used.

        Example (POSIX shell):

            export DOS2UNIX_LOCALEDIR=$HOME/share/locale

RETURN VALUE
    On success, zero is returned. When a system error occurs the last system
    error will be returned. For other errors 1 is returned.

    The return value is always zero in quiet mode, except when wrong
    command-line options are used.

STANDARDS
    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_file>

    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carriage_return>

    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline>

    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode>

AUTHORS
    Benjamin Lin - <blin@socs.uts.edu.au> Bernd Johannes Wuebben (mac2unix
    mode) - <wuebben@kde.org>, Christian Wurll (add extra newline) -
    <wurll@ira.uka.de>, Erwin Waterlander - <waterlan@xs4all.nl>
    (Maintainer)

    Project page: <http://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/dos2unix.html>

    SourceForge page: <http://sourceforge.net/projects/dos2unix/>

    Freecode: <http://freecode.com/projects/dos2unix>

SEE ALSO
    file(1) find(1) iconv(1) locale(1) xargs(1)

