Grep doesn't work correctly with .as files

Question

Here's the statement I'm running:

grep -i -H 'ConfigureControls' *.as

Note that I'm forcing file names with the -H flag.

What I get back is:

}       }   trac}   }   this.chairControls.debug.appendText("\nAn error occured when communicating with server:\n" + err.message);l);his.chairXML.storeResult;
{ackage {ublic cpublic frequest = new URLRequest(this.chairXML.store);to: " + this.chairXML.store;noll

No filename, and the text also looks very mangled (package has become {ackage, for example). What's going on?

Answer 1

It sounds like you're grepping old Mac (OS <= 9) CR eol-style files on a machine that's expecting LF (unix) or CR/LF (DOS/Windows).

In that case, it's actually grepping properly but your terminal is interpreting the CR newlines as "move the cursor to the start of the line" without advancing to an empty line while displaying.

If you're on a unix-like system (OSX should work too), try converting the eol-style:

grep 'pattern' file | tr '\r' '\n'

If that works, you can actually convert the file's eol-style with:

tr '\r' '\n' < file.as > fixed-file.as