From: Mark Hubbart <discordantus@...>
Date: 2005-06-23T01:09:18+09:00
Subject: Re: Newbee: recursively converting LF to CRLF and vice versa

On 6/22/05, Elliott <e.hmlhml@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'd like to recursively go through a bunch of directories and for text
> file - convert any linefeed (LF) endings to carriage return line feeds
> (CRLF).  Ideally, I'd like to be able to do the conversion either way
> and to distinguish from binary files (so that I don't bother doing any
> changes to these files).  Lastly, I'd like to package this utility as
> a standalone .exe for windows for systems that don't have ruby on it.
> 
> I'm slowly going through the Picaxe book but I need to get this
> utility done and I'd like to do it in Ruby if possible, rather than
> resort to some other thing like Java (gasp).  Can anyone provide me
> some hints or at least some pointers to parts of Picaxe from which I
> could assemble this functionality.
> 
> Anything info would be appreciated.

A few things to look at:

- The Find module searches recursively in directories, calling your
block of code for each file. Find it in the reference section.
- Scan for control characters in the file contents to determine
(usually) if it is binary or not. You could use a Regexp like
/[[:cntrl:]]/, which matches a single control character.
- The standalone exe can be made using RubyScript2EXE (by Erik Veen).
Find more info at http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/rubyscript2exe

HTH,
Mark