Newline character in GEDCOM files

[G Petley]

I seem to see ascii code 11 (hex 0B, aka ctrl-M) as the newline character in GEDCOM files written from Reunion 9. Checking on the web, Apple stopped using this newline character with OS 9, and starting with OS X they use (I think anyway) ascii code 10 (hex 0A, aka ctrl-J).

Can anyone confirm that Reunion 9 is still using the old Apple standard, or if there is an option to set the newline character to the standard one used by OS X. Or have I misunderstood my GEDCOM file contents?

-Graham

[donworth]

That's odd. Windows used to use CR + LF for end of lines and Mac used CR. I don't remember either using NL.

[bmohr]

Originally Posted by donworth

That's odd. Windows used to use CR + LF for end of lines and Mac used CR. I don't remember either using NL.

Traditionally, Windows (and DOS, CP/M, OS/2, etc.) used CR-LF, Unix-like systems used LF, and the classic Mac OS used CR (as did lots of pre-IBM PC personal computers, such as the Apple II, TRS-80, Commodore PET, etc.). As a UNIXy OS at its core, OS X has always used LF as its "native" line ending.

Graham is correct that Reunion 9 still uses the "classic Mac OS" line ending (CR) in exported GEDCOM files (as does Reunion 10). The GEDCOM standard says all combinations of CR and LF are acceptable (CR, LF, CR-LF, LF-CR), though I've encountered many genealogy applications that aren't so lenient. Personally, I would prefer to see Reunion export with LF rather than CR, but it's not a big deal. Reunion is not the only holdout in this regard. Text files exported from FileMaker Pro still use CR, too, and it's the default for text files exported from Word.

[Gregg]

Originally Posted by G Petley

I seem to see ascii code 11 (hex 0B, aka ctrl-M) as the newline character in GEDCOM files written from Reunion 9...

I'm not sure what you're using to see this; however, no version of Reunion ever used ASCII 11 for a new line.

[G Petley]

Yes, I meant decimal 11. Brad gave the clear answer I was looking for. The line feed has to be changed to hex 0A before editing a GEDCOM file with Unix utilities like grep.

-Graham