[SOLVED] VIM: showing line terminators.

stf92 · 08-08-2010, 01:35 PM

VIM 7.1

Hi:
Can vim show on the screen the line terminators? How do I do it? Thanks in advance.

druuna · 08-08-2010, 02:11 PM

Hi,

Are you talking about showing \n \r ^M etc? If so: you can't.

You can show control characters (including where a line ends) with :set list (:set nolist to toggle off).

You can also show which fileformat you are using: :set ff (shows unix/dos/mac) or force a certain format: set ff=unix (file is written as a unix file when saving).

Hope this clears things up.

stf92 · 08-08-2010, 02:35 PM

Yes. I have had text files edited by some M$-DOS editor, which uses ^M+^J (13, 10) to terminate a line. When I edited the same file with vim, vim, thinking it was a unix-style file, printed the string '^M' at the end of every line. To reject the ^M terminators, I issued ':set ff=unix' and saved. Or if I prefered to keep the dos-style format, I issued ':se ff=dos' at session start.

Going to your post, I did ':set list', and vim showed the line teminators with a generic symbol: the '$' character. Then you are write. It's impossible to see which line terminator $ is, in vim. I would have to fall back on 'hexdump -C'. Thanks for your posts. I think some day I'll make a serious attempt at studying the vim manual.

druuna · 08-08-2010, 02:46 PM

Hi,

od might also be of help: od -c filename

It will show the \n and/or \r terminators:

Code:

$ echo -ne "LF\nCRLF\r\nCR\r" > weird.file
$ od -c weird.file
0000000   L   F  \n   C   R   L   F  \r  \n   C   R  \r
0000014

stf92 · 08-08-2010, 03:04 PM

I'll play a little with od. Thanks again, druuna.