Illegal character ^M

Illegal character ^M

[frenco]

I have a problem with a character. I think it's a conversion problem between
dos and unix.

I have a variable that is a float value.
When I print it with the echo command i get:
0.495959
But when I try to make an operation on that value with the bc command (I am
not sure how to write the bc command).
echo $mean *1000 |bc

 I get:
(standard_in) 1 : illegal character: ^M

I already use the dos2unix command on my .sh file.
I think it's because my variable have the ^M character (not printed with the
echo command)

How can i eliminate this error?

I already try a lot of things but I am really lost.

Any thought?
-- 
View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Illegal-character-%5EM-tp32881791p32881791.html
Sent from the Cygwin list mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple

Re: Illegal character ^M

[Tim McDaniel]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011, frenco wrote:
> I have a variable that is a float value.
> When I print it with the echo command i get:
> 0.495959
...
> I think it's because my variable have the ^M character (not printed
> with the echo command)

You might try
     echo "[$the_variable_name]"
The quoting is significant.  If it does have a carriage return like
you think, then it will probably display like
     ].495959
That is, the ^M will probably make it go back to the start of the
line, and characters after it (here, ]) will overwrite what it output
before.

> But when I try to make an operation on that value with the bc
> command (I am not sure how to write the bc command).
> echo $mean *1000 |bc
...
> How can i eliminate this error?

     echo $mean *1000 | tr -d '\r' | bc
seems to work.  "tr" translates characters, "-d" says that instead of
translating it should just delete the name characters, and '\r' (note:
single quote ', not double quote ") is the ^M character.

-- 
Tim McDaniel

--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple

Re: Illegal character ^M

[Erwin Waterlander]

frenco schreef, Op 29-11-2011 19:57:
> I have a problem with a character. I think it's a conversion problem between
> dos and unix.
>
> I have a variable that is a float value.
> When I print it with the echo command i get:
> 0.495959
> But when I try to make an operation on that value with the bc command (I am
> not sure how to write the bc command).
> echo $mean *1000 |bc
>
>   I get:
> (standard_in) 1 : illegal character: ^M
>
> I already use the dos2unix command on my .sh file.
> I think it's because my variable have the ^M character (not printed with the
> echo command)
>
> How can i eliminate this error?

Hi,

Dos2unix will convert only DOS line breaks to Unix line breaks. Meaning 
\r\n to \n.
When you see a single \r (^M), without a following \n, this is a Mac 
line break.
Dos2unix will leave Mac line breaks alone.
So you need to run mac2unix instead of dos2unix on the file.

regards,

-- 
Erwin Waterlander
http://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/


--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple