Using WinSCP to transfer Scripts

Be careful how you use WinSCP to transfer files. If you transferring a script or a text file – be sure to set Text as your option

Failure to do so could potentially corrupt the file. If it’s a script it will return what appear to be syntax errors. This corruption is very easy to spot every end the line will have ^M at the end of it.

If you do copy a file which results in corruption – and its your only copy – this could be deeply annoying. Fortunately, there is a script to correct this if it a happens.

#!/bin/bash
# Du.sh: DOS to UNIX text file converter.

E_WRONGARGS=65

if [ -z "$1" ]
then
echo “Usage: `basename $0` filename-to-convert”
exit $E_WRONGARGS
fi

NEWFILENAME=$1.unx
CR=’\015′  # Carriage return.

           # 015 is octal ASCII code for CR.
# Lines in a DOS text file end in CR-LF.
# Lines in a UNIX text file end in LF only.

tr -d $CR < $1 > $NEWFILENAME

# Delete CR’s and write to new file.

echo “Original DOS text file is \”$1\”.”
echo “Converted UNIX text file is \”$NEWFILENAME\”.”
exit 0

I saved this as correct.sh

To use:

sh correct.sh problemfile.sh

When you run this script it will report:

Original DOS text file is “problemfile.sh”.
Converted UNIX text file is “problemfile.sh.unx”.

and you annoying ^M will be gone….

I would like to thank Nicke of http://www.alt64.se/vmvbu/ for this script – he didn’t write it – it just seems to be “out there”