Windows text file viewer that works on Linux text files

Question

Is there a way under Windows to view ASCII files that have the Linux-style newline sequence of a single ASCII LF character? Something like like a gedit for Windows.

I need to to this in Windows 8.1 on VirtualBox inside of Linux.

I am aware of todos and fromdos but it's not convenient to do conversions.

Solution 1

The ultimate built-in solution: WordPad. It's true! :)

For an optimal visual experience, go to the “View” ribbon and select “Word wrap” → “No wrap” (or “Wrap to window”, if that’s your thing). That does away with the page-styled view.

Solution 2

gedit for windows??... how about gedit for windows ;)

I'm sat with a linux dev in my office right now who said that this should handle what you need ti to quite happily.

Solution 3

Anything other than Notepad. (no joke)

If you don't want to install anything, WordPad will work. My personal favorite is SciTE.

Solution 4

You can use notepad++. It will display the file newline format at the bottom right of status bar.

To show the newline characters explicitly, go to View -> Show Symbol and tick on the Show End of Line option.

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Comments

[Cheezmeister]

Pretty much anything that's not notepad.exe will render LF correctly...even on Windows!

[RobH]

Try Notepad++. It has way more features than Notepad, like syntax colouring for code, column select, multiple file tabs and more.

[Digger]

On my Windows 7 machine, Wordpad views such files fine, but I can find no option which will save text files edited with same to the Linux newline format. Word is capable of doing this, however.

[datakid]

I'm going to disagree with you here. I want WordPad to be good, but for some reason, it is strictly tied to paper/page sizes as dictated by a printer? If you want or need something that can gracefully handle very long lines, you will need a third party solution (gedit for windows, sublime text, notepad++, etc)

[ScienceDiscoverer]

Yes, you can also change file ending on the fly, as needed.