I use cat -A for ages. Yes, it is a good thing.

Also, I often use cat -v to make nonprintable characters printable, so that if there's a C-N it wouldn't mess up my terminal, but if it's only text, it would not change. It's also a great way to see C-M's.

Man, those Windows users are such lazy bastards. Too damn lazy to install a decent Unix toolkit, and too damn lazy to write a trivial Perl program. All they can do is whine that a solution is too Unix specific (never mind the fact that an open source solution for any Unix toolkit is available, not something we can say about Windows tools, can we?) Djees, you give them Perl - the portable Unix - and they still aren't satisfied.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
no warnings qw /syntax/;

use Getopt::Long;

my ($show_ends, $show_tabs, $show_nonprinting);

GetOptions ("A|show-all"         =>  sub {$show_ends        = 1;
                                          $show_tabs        = 1;
                                          $show_nonprinting = 1},
            "e"                  =>  sub {$show_ends        = 1;
                                          $show_nonprinting = 1},
            "E|show-ends"        =>  sub {$show_ends        = 1},
            "t"                  =>  sub {$show_tabs        = 1;
                                          $show_nonprinting = 1},
            "T|show-tabs"        =>  sub {$show_tabs        = 1},
            "v|show-nonprinting" =>  sub {$show_nonprinting = 1},
);


while (<>) {
    chomp;
    s/([\x80-\xFF])/"M-" . chr (ord ($1) - 0x80)/eg if $show_nonprinti
+ng;
    s/([\x00-\x08])/"^"  . chr (ord ($1) + 0x40)/eg if $show_nonprinti
+ng;
    s/([\x0A-\x1F])/"^"  . chr (ord ($1) + 0x40)/eg if $show_nonprinti
+ng;
    s/\x7F/^?/g                                     if $show_nonprinti
+ng;
    s/\x09/^I/g                                     if $show_tabs;
    s/$/\$/                                         if $show_ends;
    print "$_\n";
}

__END__
[download]

Took less than 15 minutes to write and test.

Abigail

Those who work without a decent set of tools get no sympathy from me. Either they are fools, or they work for fools. In both cases, the fool is the one who suffers from reduced productivity, which is as it should be.

Who is the more foolish? The fool or the fool that follows him?