FLIP(1)

✨ FLIP(1) ✨

okay bestie, buckle up 💖 this one lives in the Linux Programmer's Manual, and it's the little tool that fixes the whole CR/LF drama between **IX and MS-DOS. it's giving ✨interoperability✨ and honestly? obsessed.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

flip, toms, toix — do newline conversions between **IX and MS-DOS 🦋

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

flip -h
flip [ -umvtsbz] file ...
flip [ -umvtsbz] -
toix [ -vtsbz] file ...
toms [ -vtsbz] file ...

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so flip is a file interchange program that converts text file formats between **ix and MS-DOS. like, it converts lines ending with carriage-return (CR) and linefeed (LF) into lines ending with just linefeed, or vice versa 🔁. and if you hand it the special argument -, it reads input from stdin and writes to stdout. main character energy fr fr.

flip has the following features, and no we are NOT skipping any of them 💜:

• flip will normally refuse to convert binary files. you can override this.
• when asked to convert a file to the same format it already has, flip causes no change to the file. so to convert all files to **IX format you can type

flip -u *

and all files will end up right, regardless of whether they were in MS-DOS or in **IX format to begin with. this also works in the opposite direction 😌

• if a file contains isolated CR characters for underlining or overprinting, flip does not change them.
• flip preserves file timestamps. you can override this.
• flip preserves file permissions.
• flip is written in C and will compile and run under MS-DOS/Turbo C, 4.3BSD, and System V. vintage but make it slay 💅
• flip accepts wildcards and multiple filenames on the command line.
• if a user interrupt aborts flip, it does not leave behind any garbage files or cause corruption of the files being converted. no mess, no crumbs 🧹
• when converting from MS-DOS to **IX format, flip removes any trailing control Z (the last character in the file), but leaves embedded control Z characters unchanged. this minimizes the possibility of accidentally converting a binary file that contains a control Z near the beginning. you can override this and ask flip to recognize the first control Z found as end-of-file.
• flip can be asked to strip the high (parity) bit as it converts a file.

flip is normally invoked as:

flip -umhvtb file ...

one of -u, -m, or -h is required. switches may be given separately or combined together after a dash. for example, the three command lines given below are equivalent:

flip -uvt *.c
flip -u -v -t *.c
flip -u -vt *.c

on systems that allow a program to know its own name, flip may be renamed (or linked) to a file called toix for conversion to **IX format, or to a file called toms for conversion to MS-DOS format 🪄. when invoked with the name toix or toms, flip will act as if it were invoked with the -u or -m option respectively.

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🔥 OPTIONS 🔥

• -u — convert to **IX format (CR LF => LF, lone CR or LF unchanged, trailing control Z removed, embedded control Z unchanged).
• -m — convert to MS-DOS format (lone LF => CR LF, lone CR unchanged).
• -h — give a help message.
• -v — be verbose, print filenames as they are processed.
• -t — touch files (don't preserve timestamps).
• -s — strip high bit.
• -b — convert binary files too (else binary files are left unchanged).
• -z — truncate file at first control Z encountered.

ngl bestie, -b is the "i know what i'm doing" button. flip refuses binaries by default for a reason 🙈

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>.

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

unix2dos(1), dos2unix(1).

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and that's the whole vibe check 🫶 this page is from Linux 2.0, dated July 20, 2002 — yeah she's a lil vintage, but she ate and left no crumbs. periodt 💖✨🎀🦋