Text files rendering incorrectly in Notepad, fine in Wordpad

AdMMM

I'm having some trouble with text files. I need to import around 4000 files into a program but they're all rendering incorrectly in Notepad and the program can't import the files.

However, when I open the file in Wordpad, it renders fine and then when I simply save the file using Wordpad, the file is fine in Notepad and can be imported without a problem.

I'm trying to figure out why they're being being rendered incorrectly in Notepad and how to fix it. Anyone have any ideas?

FILES COMPARED

Cuddlesworth

Yeah notepad is a very basic program text program, as basic as you can really get on Windows. For that reason it won't recognise most types of textual formatting. I don't think you can get what you want out of it.

Procasinator

If I took a guess it would be line endings. There a couple different characters around dealing with a newline: carriage return (which I'll refer to as \r) and newline (Which I'll refer to as \n).

Windows systems: \r\n
Unix systems: \n
Mac systems: \r

Any bet the file you are reading originated from a unix-based system, or an editor which saved with only a \n character for each newline.

You need \r\n for notepad to display new lines properly.

Procasinator

The easiest way to fix it is to a mass replace of each \n character as \r\n.
There is no command I can think of for a Windows machine to do this for you.

Either right a program or look for one.

Webmonkey

Procasinator wrote: »

If I took a guess it would be line endings. There a couple different characters around dealing with a newline: carriage return (which I'll refer to as \r) and newline (Which I'll refer to as \n).

Windows systems: \r\n
Unix systems: \n
Mac systems: \r

Any bet the file you are reading originated from a unix-based system, or an editor which saved with only a \n character for each newline.

You need \r\n for notepad to display new lines properly.

+1

BrokenArrows

Procasinator wrote: »

If I took a guess it would be line endings. There a couple different characters around dealing with a newline: carriage return (which I'll refer to as \r) and newline (Which I'll refer to as \n).

Windows systems: \r\n
Unix systems: \n
Mac systems: \r

Any bet the file you are reading originated from a unix-based system, or an editor which saved with only a \n character for each newline.

You need \r\n for notepad to display new lines properly.

what i was going to say. maybe not so clearly!

Overheal

Would a batch file be able to sort you out there? You could make a .bat to add the \n's that you need. Or a C++ program. I used to know how to do such things but its been a while. I remember it was relatively simple and probably less staggering than manually editing 4000 text files.

trout

tofrodos is yore friend.

Freeware utility to handle this very situation - accepts wildcards so no need for batch files.

Take a copy of your files, and run this on a sample of them.
There are two exes ... todos and fromdos ... I suspect you need todos.

Good luck.

http://www.thefreecountry.com/tofrodos/index.shtml