Showing tag results for text files

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a text file containing latitudes and longitudes. The numbers look like this: 36000000. I need to format these numbers so they look like this: 36.000000. How can I reformat numbers using a script?-- BE Hey, BE. You know, if you have a question about numbers then you came to the right place. After all, one of the Scripti...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have some text files that include Unicode characters. When I try to open those files using a script all I get back is gibberish. How can I open a text file as Unicode?-- FA Hey, FA. You know, the truly great magicians don’t concoct elaborate tricks that rely on trap doors, secret panels, and huge puffs of smoke to hide what...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I count the number of words in a text file?-- LA Hey, LA. You know, this is one of those questions where the Scripting Guys outsmarted themselves. (Not that outsmarting the Scripting Guys is particularly hard to do, mind you.) For one thing, we’re writing this column on a Friday, and we always look for an easy way out...

Hey, Scripting Guy! My daughter has a flash-card style program that gets its list of words from a text file. How can I write a script that will open that file and automatically shuffle the list of words?-- SN Hey, SN. You know, for the most part we try to keep this column focused on practical system administration tasks: we tell you how to set d...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I read just the last line of a text file?-- BM Hey, BM. You know, if you’ve ever wondered how Hey, Scripting Guy! differs from other daily columns (like, say, Dear Abby), well, here’s one way. Suppose someone writes Dear Abby and says this: Dear Abby:My life is all messed up and I need to do something about it. How ca...