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Questions tagged [textfiles]

59 questions
37
votes
1 answer

Make IrfanView ignore text files or other file types?

I just installed IrfanView and while viewing images, I notice IrfanView iterates text files as well as image files. How do I make it NOT include text files (or other kinds of files) in its iteration?
user3109
34
votes
4 answers

How to replace part of a text file between markers with another text file?

Say I have a text file like this: # custom content section a b ### BEGIN GENERATED CONTENT c d ### END GENERATED CONTENT I'd like to replace the portion between the GENERATED CONTENT tags with the contents of another file. What's the simplest way…
smokris
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27
votes
3 answers

How do I get Google Drive to open text files with arbitrary extensions as text files?

I have text files on Google Drive that do not end with the .txt suffix (such as: .r, .bas, .awk...). I want to view them using the Drive Notepad app, but it does not recognize the files as text. Is there a way I can get these files to be recognized…
eliavs
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23
votes
2 answers

Do text files store their encoding method for later decoding?

I was wondering if some text files store their encoding method along their text content for later decoding? Or is it the text viewer's job to guess the encoding method for a given text file, and the guessing may not always be correct? If yes, how…
Tim
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18
votes
2 answers

Edit first line of large text file

I have a huge text file, far too big for the whole thing to be paged into memory. All I need to do with this text file is edit the first line (its a CSV file and I need to alter the titles). Is there a simple way I can do this in bash?
lynks
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16
votes
4 answers

How do I create a multiline text file with Echo in Windows command prompt?

I'm using Windows 7 and I would like to quickly create a small text file with a few lines of text in the Command prompt. I can create a single line text file with: echo hello > myfile.txt but how can I create a text file with multiple lines using…
Jonas
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15
votes
3 answers

How do I export the history from the Windows command line to a text file?

How do I export the history from the Windows command line to a text file? I think you can do it in Linux as something like "history >filename.txt", but how do you do it in Windows? I'm a geneticist, and I want a record of exactly what programs I've…
Kirt
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15
votes
5 answers

Open massive file on Mac?

I'm looking to open a massive text file on my mac. The file is just over 10Gigs. I won't get into how it was created or what it's use is, since it isn't really relevant to the question. Are there any mac programs which will allow me to open such a…
Chris Salij
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15
votes
1 answer

Why does my "grep" stop filtering a non-ASCII file it thinks is "binary"?

I'm working with a Windows-10 computer, using a WSL. I'm investigating a logfile, produced by NLog in a C# application. I'm expecting log entries to appear everywhere throughout the file, but I see the following: Linux prompt> grep "geen…
Dominique
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12
votes
6 answers

How can I convert a PowerPoint to plain text?

I have a Powerpoint Presentation (.pptx) file with 100 slides. I want to take all of the text from it and save it as a plain text file. How can I do this? PowerPoint doesn't seem to let you save it as a .txt file directly, and I don't want to go…
Pikamander2
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11
votes
3 answers

Change Firefox default encoding for text files

Text files do not include character encoding information, so Firefox has no way of knowing which one is correct. Through the menu View → Text encoding I can select the appropriate encoding. I find myself doing this every time I open a text file,…
gerrit
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8
votes
3 answers

Saving a tab separated file in Excel without quotes

I have a tab separated value file that I want to edit in Excel. When Excel saves the file it modifies any column with quotes. It puts quotes around the whole column, and then double any quotes within the content of the column ( " -> "" ). I don't…
BlueWaldo
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5
votes
2 answers

Display Text File On Desktop

I am looking for freeware that will allow me to display a text file on my windows desktop. Hopefully some software that is lightweight, and will work on WinXP to Win8. I plan to use this freeware in accordance with some batch file/scheduled tasks,…
crosenblum
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5
votes
1 answer

Command-line tool to measure how fast a file is growing?

Is there a command-line tool to measure how fast a text file is growing, in units of lines/second? For small-ish files, I can do something with watch and wc -l, but that measures the file anew each time. Usually I want to watch either a huge log…
Ken
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4
votes
1 answer

file changes -- notification and diff

I'm looking for a way to be notified if a text file changes (Windows 7), and be offered a file diff upon such a change. For example, the text editor Notepad++ does part of this, notifying me of an external change (in a file currently open) and…
newenglander
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