Should the tr command be run on text files ONLY?

Should I run the command `tr \\r \\n '
(minus the quotes) in A Terminal on textfiles ONLY or will tr harm
any binary files?

After I migrate to Linux in a few months, I was planning to copy a
large folder of text files to my home directory from a Macintosh. I
was then going the open the terminal, cd to the directory of text
files and enter `tr \\r \\n *'. But I just remembered that this
folder (and sub-folders) of text files (called N0TES) also contains
some pdf, jpeg, tiff, html, and mp3 files.

I was going to do this because I want to use some of the *NIX editors
(Emacs, pico, hopefully NEDIT, and maybe nano) on some of these files.

Thanks in advance for any answers!

--
Bob Batson
rcb@kc.rr.com

"Chocolate is the true opiate of the masses!"
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Re: Should the tr command be run on text files ONLY?

At 07:49 PM 3/11/2005 -0600, Bob Batson wrote:
>Should I run the command `tr \\r \\n ' (minus
>the quotes) in A Terminal on textfiles ONLY or will tr harm any binary files?
>
>After I migrate to Linux in a few months, I was planning to copy a large
>folder of text files to my home directory from a Macintosh. I was then
>going the open the terminal, cd to the directory of text files and enter
>`tr \\r \\n *'. But I just remembered that this folder (and sub-folders)
>of text files (called N0TES) also contains some pdf, jpeg, tiff, html, and
>mp3 files.
>
>I was going to do this because I want to use some of the *NIX editors
>(Emacs, pico, hopefully NEDIT, and maybe nano) on some of these files.
>
>Thanks in advance for any answers!

DEFINITELY run this command only on text files. It will render binary files
unusable in most cases and never be good for them. Executables are sure to
be unusable, and files like video, sounds, and images will have errors in
them that may wreck them or may just introduce bits of distortion.

BTW, most Linux systems have the commands todos and fromdos to simplify
this sort of translation from DOS-based systems (including Windows). which
use \r\n instead of \n. As I recall, Macs use yet another convention for
text file newline encoding ... your example above implies Macs use \r by
itself, which matches my memory of 10 years ago ... and I wouldn't be
surprised if there was a converter for it too.




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Re: Should the tr command be run on text files ONLY?

At 6:10 PM -0800 3/11/05, Ray Olszewski wrote:

>At 07:49 PM 3/11/2005 -0600, Bob Batson wrote:
>>Should I run the command `tr \\r \\n '
>>(minus the quotes) in A Terminal on textfiles ONLY or will tr harm
>>any binary files?

[snip]

>DEFINITELY run this command only on text files. It will render
>binary files unusable in most cases and never be good for them.
>Executables are sure to be unusable, and files like video, sounds,
>and images will have errors in them that may wreck them or may just
>introduce bits of distortion.

Thanks a lot! BTW, is the command `tr \\r \\n *' or `tr \r \n *'?

--
Bob Batson
rcb@kc.rr.com

"Chocolate is the true opiate of the masses!"
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