Unix Tip of the Month: Control text from the command line

Have you ever needed to convert a text file from one format to anotherÑsay, from HTML to pure text, or from text to Microsoft WordÕs .doc format? Though many OS X programs are up to the task, Tiger lets you do it all from TerminalÑwith textutil . The basic form of the conversion command is as follows:

textutil -convert format name file name

(Important note: For any of these conversion commands to work, you need to either move into the directory where the files reside [using the cd command] or specify the fileÕs full path. To add the path to a command, simply drag the file to the Terminal prompt.)

For example, to create a text file from the raw HTML source you saved from a Web page, you would type the following:

textutil -convert txt MyHTML.html

By default, the output file name will get its name from the input file, but the extension will match the format used in the conversion (.txt in this example).

The textutil command can do more than just convert text formats, though. The -info option will give you information such as type, size, length, and (for HTML files) titleÑjust type textutil -info file name to see this. You can also use textutil to merge multiple text files into one. To merge files, you use the -cat option, which comes from concatenate, another word for merge. Just give textutil a list of files to merge, along with the format to use, like so:

textutil -cat txt file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt

When you press return, the command will merge the three files into one new file, named out.txt by default. If youÕd like to control the output file name, just use the -output flag to set the path and name:

textutil -cat txt -output MergedFile.txt file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt

Notice that the output file name (MergedFile.txt ) comes before the list of files youÕre merging, not after.

[Senior Editor Rob Griffiths is the author of Mac OS X Power Hound, Panther Edition (OÕReilly, 2004), and runs the Mac OS X Hints Web site.]