Posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 10:40am by Rob Wilkerson
Because I regularly move between operating systems, I often need to use Windows-created files on Linux. Because of the difference in EOL notation between the operating systems (notice how I carefully avoided any editorial comment on that difference?), that means regularly encountering the ^M character.
While I’ve never found a situation where the character creates a real problem for me, it’s certainly annoying to see those things all over a large file. In the past I’ve used elbow grease and/or various shell scripts to clear these, but today I found out that Ubuntu (probably other distros, as well) offers a utility to do this quickly and easily.
The package is named tofrodos and, while not installed by default, is available in the repository. To install & use:
$ sudo apt-get install tofrodos
$ dos2unix <file to convert>
Couldn’t be easier, right? This is the thing I love best about Linux.
linux, shell, utilities
Posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 8:49pm by Rob Wilkerson
I work closely with a team in Bangalore, India and I occasionally have to interact with our offices in other parts of the world. As a result, I find it really handy to know what time it is in those areas of the world. Linux, I’ve recently discovered, offers this functionality directly through its clock panel item. For Mac, it’s available as an extra bundled with iStat Menus that is applied to the clock display on the menu bar. Windows offers, by far, the most anemic time display with only the time visible and the date displayed only when the time hovered over.
I would like this utility better if it were created as a plugin to enhance the time display. I’d like it even better if it also included a minimalistic calendar. It does neither of those, but Microsoft’s Time Zone utility does exactly what its name implies and does it in a way that’s not unattractive. It’s worth a look for Windows users who need to know what time it is in other areas of the world.
utilities, windows
Posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 7:51pm by Rob Wilkerson
I’m a sucker for a good utility application. That’s hardly news, but for new readers it seemed like a logical introduction. I can’t get enough of those tiny little applications that do one thing (or a few small things) that really makes my life better in some way and does it really well.
Today’s gem: iStat menus
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utilities, istat menus, magical
