The last character of a file

The last character of a file

[Matthew Walker]

Emacs is adding a newline to the end of my file.  I'd like it not to :o)

I have a large file (~200Mb) that I wish to edit.  Emacs tells me that 
it's too large to open.  I only want to alter a few bytes in the first 
1000, so I extract them using head:

head --bytes=1000 source.file > source.file.head

I then extract the end of the file:

tail --bytes=<filesize-1000> source.file > source.file.tail

Next on the list is to edit source.file.head, and then put the two files 
back together:

cat source.file.head source.file.tail > source.file.updated

My problem is that emacs seems not to like the fact that 
source.file.head doesn't end with a newline.  It seems to feel compelled 
to add a newline to the end of the file.  The file is now 1001 bytes in 
size, and they just don't append nicely like that.

I could cut off the last byte by

head --bytes=1000 source.file.head | cat - source.file.tail > 
source.file.updated

But I'd like more to know either:
* how to edit the file with emacs, or
* how to stop emacs from adding the newline.

Thank you for your thoughts,

Matthew.

Re: The last character of a file

[Dan Anderson]

Try putting:

(setq require-final-newline nil)

in your .emacs

Documentation:
*Value of t says silently ensure a file ends in a newline when it is
saved.  Non-nil but not t says ask user whether to add a newline when
there isn't one. nil means don't add newlines.

-Dan

Re: The last character of a file

[Stefan Monnier]

> Emacs is adding a newline to the end of my file.  I'd like it not to :o)

By default Emacs normally does not add a newline.
It is controlled by the variable require-final-newline.
If that variable is t set it to nil or `ask'.
And also try to find out why it is set to t.  It might be due
to the major mode you're using to edit the file, or to some change
in your .emacs or in the system global site-start.el or default.el.
(try passing -q and/or --no-site-file as args to Emacs when starting
to prevent loading those config files).


        Stefan

Re: The last character of a file

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

Matthew Walker <m.g.walker@NOmassey.SPac.AMnz> writes:

> Emacs is adding a newline to the end of my file.  I'd like it not to :o)

if you're on vms this is basically required (but you would have probably
killed yourself by now out of sheer misery so that can't be the case).

> * how to stop emacs from adding the newline.

see var `require-final-newline'.

thi