About
tr is a filter program that translate, squeeze, and/or delete characters.
It's part of the Gnu utility.
Example
To Uppercase
Taking the case from lower to upper
echo hello world | tr a-z A-Z
HELLO WORLD
Delete characters
echo hello world | tr -d ' '
helloworld
Translate from EOL Windows to EOL Linux
tr '\r\n' '\n' < input_filename
Syntax
tr [OPTION]... SET1 [SET2]
-c, -C, --complement use the complement of SET1
-d, --delete delete characters in SET1, do not translate
-s, --squeeze-repeats replace each sequence of a repeated character
that is listed in the last specified SET,
with a single occurrence of that character
-t, --truncate-set1 first truncate SET1 to length of SET2
--help display this help and exit
--version output version information and exit
SETs are specified as strings of characters. Most represent themselves.
Interpreted sequences are:
\NNN character with octal value NNN (1 to 3 octal digits)
\\ backslash
\a audible BEL
\b backspace
\f form feed
\n new line
\r return
\t horizontal tab
\v vertical tab
CHAR1-CHAR2 all characters from CHAR1 to CHAR2 in ascending order
[CHAR*] in SET2, copies of CHAR until length of SET1
[CHAR*REPEAT] REPEAT copies of CHAR, REPEAT octal if starting with 0
[:alnum:] all letters and digits
[:alpha:] all letters
[:blank:] all horizontal whitespace
[:cntrl:] all control characters
[:digit:] all digits
[:graph:] all printable characters, not including space
[:lower:] all lower case letters
[:print:] all printable characters, including space
[:punct:] all punctuation characters
[:space:] all horizontal or vertical whitespace
[:upper:] all upper case letters
[:xdigit:] all hexadecimal digits
[=CHAR=] all characters which are equivalent to CHAR
Translation occurs if -d is not given and both SET1 and SET2 appear.
-t may be used only when translating. SET2 is extended to length of
SET1 by repeating its last character as necessary. Excess characters
of SET2 are ignored. Only [:lower:] and [:upper:] are guaranteed to
expand in ascending order; used in SET2 while translating, they may
only be used in pairs to specify case conversion. -s uses the last
specified SET, and occurs after translation or deletion.