Install Dos2Unix on Ubuntu 20.04

On DOS/Windows systems, different text file line endings are used than on the Unix/Linux systems. DOS/Windows uses line endings that represented as carriage return followed by line feed (CRLF or \r\n). However, Unix/Linux uses only line feed (LF or \n) for line endings. Dos2Unix is a package that contains dos2unix and unix2dos commands for converting line endings in a text file from DOS/Windows to Unix/Linux and vice versa.

This tutorial shows how to install Dos2Unix on Ubuntu 20.04.

Install Dos2Unix

Execute the following command to update the package lists:

sudo apt update

Next, install Dos2Unix:

sudo apt install -y dos2unix

Once installation is completed, we can check version as follows:

dos2unix --version
unix2dos --version

Testing Dos2Unix

For testing purpose, create a text file that has CRLF line endings:

printf "First\r\nSecond\r\nThird\r\n" > test.txt

The file command can be used to verify the type of line endings:

file test.txt

Output:

test.txt: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators

Execute the dos2unix command to convert line endings from DOS/Windows to Unix/Linux:

dos2unix test.txt

Use file command to check the type of line endings. You will get the following output:

test.txt: ASCII text

Opposite command can be used as well. Convert line endings from Unix/Linux to DOS/Windows using unix2dos command:

unix2dos test.txt

Uninstall Dos2Unix

If Dos2Unix is no longer necessary, you can remove it using command:

sudo apt purge --autoremove -y dos2unix