Published at LXer:

Life would be a lot easier if we could live in a Linux-only world and if applications never required data from other sources. However, the need to get data from Windows, MS-DOS, or old Macintosh systems is all too common. This kind of import process requires some conversions to solve file format differences; otherwise, it would be impossible to share data, or file contents would be imported incorrectly. The easiest way to transfer data between systems is by using plain text files or common formats like comma-separated value (CSV) files. However, converting such files from Windows or Mac OS results in formatting differences for the newline characters and character encoding. This article explains why we have these problems and shows ways to solve them.

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