Re: trailing blank line in a text file

[Nifty Hat Mitch <mitch48 sbcglobal net>]

On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 06:31:39PM -0500, Olga wrote:
> >> Can anybody tell me what is going on? Why do I get the trailing blank
> >> line.
> >>
> >> Thank you.
> >>
> >> Olga
> >
> > What are you using to edit the files in question?
....
> I have not tried emacs. I originally edited the files with nano. But later
> in order to get rid of that trailing blank line I used vim, nano, gedit
> and mc. ....

Can you show us the last bits of the file (od -x).

I suspect you are seeing a NL .vs. CR+LF thing.

There may also be a difference in the trailing newline.  Code that
expects a line to end (readline) expect the NL character.  

Here are ways to look at it.

    $ echo -n bark > /tmp/bark
    $ echo  gark > /tmp/gark
    $ wc /tmp/bark /tmp/gark
    0 1 4 /tmp/bark
    1 1 5 /tmp/gark
    $ od -x /tmp/bark
    0000000 6162 6b72
    0000004
    $ od -x /tmp/gark
    0000000 6167 6b72 000a
    0000005
    [mitch xtl1 one]$
    $ unix2dos /tmp/bark
    unix2dos: converting file /tmp/bark to DOS format ...
    $ unix2dos /tmp/gark
    unix2dos: converting file /tmp/gark to DOS format ...
    $ od -x /tmp/gark
    0000000 6167 6b72 0a0d
    0000006
    $ od -x /tmp/bark
    0000000 6162 6b72
    0000004

    $ echo -n bark > /tmp/bar
    $ wc /tmp/bar
    0 1 4 /tmp/bar
    $ vi /tmp/bar
    $ wc /tmp/bar
    1 1 5 /tmp/bar

See vim's documentation on :filetype
and "set notextmode"... 

But first lets see what the specific problem is.



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