'^M' character at end of lines

Question

It's caused by the DOS/Windows line-ending characters. Like Andy Whitfield said, the Unix command dos2unix will help fix the problem. If you want more information, you can read the man pages for that command.

Fix line endings in vi by running the following:

:set fileformat=unix

:w

The cause is the difference between how a Windows-based based OS and a Unix based OS store the end-of-line markers.

Windows based operating systems, thanks to their DOS heritage, store an end-of-line as a pair of characters - 0x0D0A (carriage return + line feed). Unix-based operating systems just use 0x0A (a line feed). The ^M you're seeing is a visual representation of 0x0D (a carriage return).

dos2unix will help with this. You probably also need to adjust the source of the scripts to be 'Unix-friendly'.

The easiest way is to use vi. I know that sounds terrible but its simple and already installed on most UNIX environments. The ^M is a new line from Windows/DOS environment.

from the command prompt: $ vi filename

Then press ":" to get to command mode.

Search and Replace all Globally is :%s/^M//g "Press and hold control then press V then M" which will replace ^M with nothing.

Then to write and quit enter ":wq" Done!

Try using dos2unix to strip off the ^M.

In vi, do a :%s/^M//g

To get the ^M hold the CTRL key, press V then M (Both while holding the control key) and the ^M will appear. This will find all occurrences and replace them with nothing.