PRB: Unnecessary Carriage Returns in FoxPro for UNIX Files

• Microsoft FoxPro for UNIX, version 2.6

SYMPTOMS

It is possible that FoxPro for UNIX files could have both carriage return (CR) and line feed (LF) (also called newline, abbreviated NL) characters in them. An editing program like vi would display the CR-LF pair as a control M (^M). This CR character may cause problems when printing or doing other operations.

CAUSE

One way to end up with unnecessary CR characters is to use functions that produce CR-NL pairs. For example, rather than using FPUTS(), use FWRITE() to write the string to a file, and then use an FWRITE() of CHR(10) to produce the UNIX-style NL character.

RESOLUTION

If the file already has the CR characters in it:

1. Create a shell script through vi or another editor called 'xcr' for example.

2. The UNIX shell script should contain the following line:

   tr -d "\015"

3. Use the following command at the UNIX prompt to make the file executable:

   chmod 777 xcr

4. To clear CR characters from a file called myfile and put the new file in mynewfile, use this command:

   xcr < myfile > mynewfile