I'm trying to replace each ,
in the current file by a new line:
:%s/,/\n/g
But it inserts what looks like a ^@
instead of an actual newline. The file is not in DOS mode or anything.
What should I do?
If you are curious, like me, check the question Why is \r a newline for Vim? as well.
Best Answer
Use
\r
instead of\n
.Substituting by
\n
inserts a null character into the text. To get a newline, use\r
. When searching for a newline, you’d still use\n
, however. This asymmetry is due to the fact that\n
and\r
do slightly different things:\n
matches an end of line (newline), whereas\r
matches a carriage return. On the other hand, in substitutions\n
inserts a null character whereas\r
inserts a newline (more precisely, it’s treated as the input CR). Here’s a small, non-interactive example to illustrate this, using the Vim command line feature (in other words, you can copy and paste the following into a terminal to run it).xxd
shows a hexdump of the resulting file.In other words,
\n
has inserted the byte 0x00 into the text;\r
has inserted the byte 0x0a.