How to automate dos2unix using shell script?

bash shell dos2unix
Alan Smith picture Alan Smith · Jul 2, 2012 · Viewed 15.9k times · Source

I have a bunch of xml files in a directory that need to have the dos2unix command performed on them and new files will be added every so often. I Instead of manually performing dos2unix command on each files everytime I would like to automate it all with a script. I have never even looked at a shell script in my life but so far I have this from what I have read on a few tutorials:

FILES=/tmp/testFiles/*
for f in $FILES
do
  fname=`basename $f`
  dos2unix *.xml $f $fname
done

However I keep getting the 'usage' output showing up. I think the problem is that I am not assigning the name of the new file correctly (fname). Can anyone help.

Thanks, Alan

Answer

Dennis Williamson picture Dennis Williamson · Jul 2, 2012

The reason you're getting a usage message is that dos2unix doesn't take the extra arguments you're supplying. It will, however, accept multiple filenames (also via globs). You don't need a loop unless you're processing more files than can be accepted on the command line.

dos2unix /tmp/testFiles/*.xml

Should be all you need, unless you need recursion:

find /tmp/testFiles -name '*.xml' -exec dos2unix {} +

(for GNU find)

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