I have a file which looks like :

[ianholmes]

I have a file which looks like : k4renas^M^[[B
The ^M is one character, as is the ^[ after it.
How do I use cut/grep to extract only the ascii characters
at the front of the record ( ie k4renas ? ) ?

 

[initOK]

I believe grep will return the whole line. You may want to use sed instead.

 

[CaKiwi]

in vi, enter

:%s/^M.*//

Get ^M by entering cntl-v cntl-m

Or create a file, t.sed say, containing

s/^M.*//

and enter

sed -f t.sed input-file CaKiwi

 

[vgersh99]

or similarly with sed:

sed 's/\(.*\)'`/usr/bin/echo "\015"`.*'/\1/g' myInputFile.txt vlad
+---------------------------+
|#include<disclaimer.h> |
+---------------------------+

 

[Patten]

If you are on a Sun box try:
dos2unix filename