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From: ires@kaspar.ires.com (Bruce R Larson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: unwanted control characters in downloads
Summary: "col" will do this for you
Message-ID: <108@kaspar.ires.com>
Date: 19 Apr 91 05:11:53 GMT
References: <1991Apr9.195318.18030@rodan.acs.syr.edu> <1991Apr10.165508.20237@grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr> <4835@syma.sussex.ac.uk>
Reply-To: <blarson@ires.com>
Organization: Integral Resources, Milton, MA
Lines: 27

> To all: when I download certain files from a Sun/4 (running SunOS 4.1), such
> as a 'man' file, my files contain all the _^H and other sequences used in
> that file. Is there an easy way to eliminate this?
>

If you have "col" you can do this;

  		man "foo" | col -b >savefile

From the man page,

  NAME
	col - filter reverse line-feeds

	[ ... ]

	If the -b option is given, col assumes that the output dev-
	ice in use is not capable of backspacing.  In this case, if
	two or more characters are to appear in the same place, only
	the last one read will be output.

Bruce
-- 
Bruce R. Larson
Integral Resources, Milton MA
Internet:  blarson@ires.com
Uucp:  ..!{world|uunet}!ires.com!blarson