What is `^M` and how do I get rid of it?

Question

When I open the file in vim, I am seeing strange ^M characters.

Unfortunately, the world's favorite search engine does not do well with special characters in queries, so I'm asking here:

• What is this ^M character?

• How could it have gotten there?

• How do I get rid of it?

Answer 1

The ^M is a carriage-return character. If you see this, you're probably looking at a file that originated in the DOS/Windows world, where an end-of-line is marked by a carriage return/newline pair, whereas in the Unix world, end-of-line is marked by a single newline.

Read this article for more detail, and also the Wikipedia entry for newline.

This article discusses how to set up vim to transparently edit files with different end-of-line markers.

If you have a file with ^M at the end of some lines and you want to get rid of them, use this in Vim:

:s/^M$//

(Press Ctrl+V Ctrl+M to insert that ^M.)

Answer 2

Most UNIX operating systems have a utility called dos2unix that will convert the CRLF to LF. The other answers cover the "what are they" question.

Answer 3

A simpler way to do this is to use the following command:

dos2unix filename

This command works with path patterns as well, Eg

dos2unix path/name*

If it doesn't work, try using different mode:

dos2unix -c mac filename

• -c Set conversion mode. Where CONVMODE is one of: ascii, 7bit, iso, mac with ascii being the default.

Answer 4

This worked for me

:e ++ff=dos 

The :e ++ff=dos command tells Vim to read the file again, forcing dos file format. Vim will remove CRLF and LF-only line endings, leaving only the text of each line in the buffer.

then

:set ff=unix 

and finally

:wq 

Answer 5

Another way to get rid of carriage returns is with the tr command.

I have a small script that look like this

#!/bin/sh
tmpfile=$(mktemp)
tr -d '\r' <"$1" >"$tmpfile"
mv "$tmpfile" "$1"

Answer 6

You can clean this up with sed:

sed -e 's/^M$//' < infile > outfile

The trick is how to enter the carriage-return properly. Generally, you need to type C-v C-m to enter a literal carriage return. You can also have sed work in place with

sed -i.bak -e 's/^M$//' infile

Answer 7

In my case,

Nothing above worked, I had a CSV file copied to Linux machine from my mac and I used all the above commands but nothing helped but the below one

tr "\015" "\n" < inputfile > outputfile

I had a file in which ^M characters were sandwitched between lines something like below

Audi,A4,35 TFSi Premium,,CAAUA4TP^MB01BNKT6TG,TRO_WBFB_500,Trico,CARS,Audi,A4,35 TFSi Premium,,CAAUA4TP^MB01BNKTG0A,TRO_WB_T500,Trico,

Answer 8

What is this ^M?
The ^M is a carriage-return character. If you see this, you're probably looking at a file that originated in the DOS/Windows world, where an end-of-line is marked by a carriage return/newline pair, whereas in the Unix world, end-of-line is marked by a single newline.

How could it have got there?
When there is change in file format.

How do I get rid of it?
open your file with

vim -b FILE_PATH

save it with following command

:%s/^M//g

Answer 9

You can use Vim in Ex mode:

ex -bsc '%s/\r//|x' file

1. -b binary mode

2. % select all lines

3. s substitute

4. \r carriage return

5. x save and close

Answer 10

In the past, I have seen even configuration files are not parsed properly and complain about whitespace, but if you vi and do a set list it won't show the whitespace, grep filename [[space]] will show you ^M

that's when dos2unix file helps

Answer 11

None of the options here worked for me.

Finally opened the file in MS Word, and voila the ^M disappeared. Cut and paste to any other editor of your choice.