How to get rid of ^M from a text file on Linux or Unix

When you transfer text files from Windows to Linux or Unix systems, you often see '^M' characters at the end of lines. This happens because Windows and Linux/Unix handle line breaks differently—Windows uses CR+LF (\r\n), while Linux/Unix just uses LF (\n).

In this guide, we’ll look at a few simple ways to remove these characters and explain how each method works.

$ cat -v HelloWorld.java

public class HelloWorld^M
{^M
	public static void main(String[] args) {^M
		System.out.println("Hello World!");^M
	}^M
}^M

Using the dos2unix command

The dos2unix command is a simple and widely used method.

$ dos2unix filename

Using vi/vim editor

In Vi/Vim, You can directly search for and remove the '^M' character. The command above searches for '^M' at the end of each line throughout the entire file and removes it.

To input '^M', push Ctrl down and then press v and n consecutively.

• Vim on Linux: 'Ctrl + v + m'
• Gvim on Windows: 'Ctrl + q + m'
• '\015' instead of '^M'

:%s/^M$//g

Using sed (stream editor)

sed is a stream editor, which is a tool that allows you to automatically modify the contents of a file. The above command removes the '^M' characters from the original file and saves the result to a new file.

Note that ^M must be entered by pressing 'Ctrl + v + m', or you can use '\r' as an alternative.

$ sed -e "s/^M//g" org_file > new_file

$ sed 's/\r//g' org_file > new_file