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Changing CR/LF output type in Visual Studio

Answer 1

+1 A:

Yes, it's a bit too vague at the moment - you should provide:

More details about how you're writing out the files
More details about exactly what's in the files afterwards. Use a hex editor to find this out.

The simplest way of changing what happens in terms of line endings is probably to just be explicit about it in the code. For example, instead of:

output.WriteLine(foo);

write

output.Write(foo);
// Here LineTerminator would be a constant - or you could make
// it a variable somewhere
output.Write(LineTerminator);

... possibly encapsulating this in your own class to make it easier (so you can have your own WriteLine method which does the right thing, perhaps).

EDIT: I've been assuming that it's your own code writing out the files. If that's not the case, the easiest solution is probably to find or write a tool to convert the files, and put it as a postbuild step. I'm sure such tools exist (I think there was one called dos2unix a while ago) but it may be as easy to write your own as to find one which does exactly what you want.

Jon Skeet 2010-01-04 07:07:50

@Jon Skeet: yes you are right, I did not write the code myself. Before your answer, I was under the assumption that the CR/LF comes from VS so I was looking for an option to convert them to linux compatible format. Now come to think about it, they should come from the code which generated the files (initially I thought it was some sort of custom build process). The generated files look the same as other files in Notepad++. Havent try with hex editor yet. Looks like I'll have to search for the logic to see if theres anything suspicious. Thanks.

BeraCim 2010-01-04 22:23:51

It's probably just using TextWriter.WriteLine, which will use the system default line break (i.e. CR/LF on Windows).

Jon Skeet 2010-01-04 22:45:47

@Jon Skeet: I found that the generated files were created using copy command from msbuild e.g. <Copy SourceFiles="blah" DestinationFiles="blah"/>. The "source file" itself was just created like any other text file. The CR/LF doesnt appear to be coded manually. On another note, the strange thing is that if I copy the entire content of the generated file, and paste + save it into a notepad, the problem disappears... and I'm doing all of the above in Windows. I'm wondering whether the CR/LF is really the problem now even though there is nothing else I could see that is suspicious...

BeraCim 2010-01-04 23:47:34

@Jon Skeet: I found the problem. It turned out that there was something wrong with the encoding of the file. With properly encoded characters, everything worked fine. Thanks.

BeraCim 2010-01-05 01:09:14

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Changing CR/LF output type in Visual Studio

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