Text Editors

John-in-France · 04-11-2008, 01:54 PM

Please help educate an old Scotsman.

What is the difference between the file formats of a plain text file in Linux and in Windows? For example, if I create a file using, say gedit in Fedora and then look at it in kwrite, everything is fine. If I look at it in Windows Notepad, all the CR/LF line endings seem to have disappeared and I get a fairly difficult to follow jumble of text.

John

Mega Man X · 04-11-2008, 02:07 PM

That is because Windows use a different character for carriage return than Linux and Unix in general uses. Your best bet is to use a decent text editor in Windows, such as Scite, Notepad2, Texpad, Ultraedit or Notepad++. Remember that Notepad has not been update in years, pretty much like IE6 and should be avoided at all costs.

John-in-France · 04-11-2008, 02:33 PM

Thanks for the information and suggestion.

My reason for asking is that from time to time I want to cut and paste data between Linux and Windows and I have noticed that a Windows text file seems to be fine in Linux but not the reverse.

I was labouring under the naive assumption that the concept of an ASCII file with lines terminated by CR/LF hadn't changed since the days of DOS Version 2.0. I'll see what I can find for an editor when I'm on the wrong side of the wire!

Thanks again.

John

jay73 · 04-11-2008, 03:16 PM

*Nix has tool called dos2unix/unix2dos (or tofrodos) to translate from nix format to windows format and back.

Tinkster · 04-11-2008, 03:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John-in-France

Thanks for the information and suggestion.

My reason for asking is that from time to time I want to cut and paste data between Linux and Windows and I have noticed that a Windows text file seems to be fine in Linux but not the reverse.

I was labouring under the naive assumption that the concept of an ASCII file with lines terminated by CR/LF hadn't changed since the days of DOS Version 2.0. I'll see what I can find for an editor when I'm on the wrong side of the wire!

Thanks again. :study:

John

Wordpad actually does the trick. And yes, DOS (and hence Windows)
uses CR/LF, Unix (and hence Linux) is using a LF (has been for almost
40 years, btw ;} - again, DOS is the deviation), and the Mac uses CR ...

Cheers,
Tink

John-in-France · 04-11-2008, 03:46 PM

Thanks Tinkster,

You're right - my test file (a Grub Menu) which looked terrible in Notepad looks fine in Wordpad so all that hunting for Scite - it took all of ten minutes! - was unnecessary. Funny, somehow I think that my editing in Windows will use Scite rather than Wordpad - I want a Text Editor, not a baby Word Processor. :-)

John

Tinkster · 04-11-2008, 03:51 PM

Heh. No worries, glad you found Scite ;}
You could have installed cygwin and used the venerable VIM, too ;D

Cheers,
Tink

John-in-France · 04-12-2008, 03:12 AM

Eekk! Tinkster Please don't suggest VIM.

I absolutely hate VIM - I've never been able to get my head round using it even for things when you have to like visudo! I'm sure there must be a way of shifting the editor default away from VIM and when I figure it out....

John

Disillusionist · 04-12-2008, 03:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John-in-France

Eekk! Tinkster Please don't suggest VIM.

I absolutely hate VIM - I've never been able to get my head round using it even for things when you have to like visudo! I'm sure there must be a way of shifting the editor default away from VIM and when I figure it out....

John

To change the editor used with visudo, ensure that you have the EDITOR environment variable set to you favorite editor, example:

Code:

export EDITOR=gedit
sudo visudo

John-in-France · 04-12-2008, 06:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Disillusionist

To change the editor used with visudo, ensure that you have the EDITOR environment variable set to you favorite editor, example:

Code:

export EDITOR=gedit
sudo visudo

Ta! - sorted - John

cizzi · 04-12-2008, 11:29 AM

You might also want to check out pico text editor if you're comming from windows and are new to linux, so when you hit the backspace key it actually does a backspace vs ESC,x in vi.