Try this: tr '\035' '\n' <stuff.marc | wc -l --Th -----Original Message----- From: Jeffrey Barnett [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 4:47 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Linfeed Trick Hello, lurker speaking up. :-) When I try this it doesn't seem to work. The escape sequences both wind up being treated like the single character (number) 0 . (see below) $ echo X |tr X Y Y $ echo X |tr X \012 0 $ echo X |tr X \035 0 $ echo XX |tr X \012 00 $ echo X | wc -l 1 $ echo XX |tr X \012 | wc -l 1 I'm thinking maybe there are some terminal or shell settings also needed? Hickey,Thom wrote: >Actually, I do like writing code, but ended up using 'tr' to do the >substitution, even though I did come up with Python code that was actually >faster. > >--Th > > >-----Original Message----- >From: Ed Summers [mailto:[log in to unmask]] >Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 10:24 AM >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Linfeed Trick > >On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 09:49:22AM -0400, Houghton,Andrew wrote: > > >>cat *.mrc | tr \035 \012 | wc -l >> >> > >Isn't that shell code :) > >//Ed > >