[vim] How to convert the ^M linebreak to 'normal' linebreak in a file opened in vim?

vim shows on every line ending ^M

How I do to replace this with a 'normal' linebreak?

^M is retrieved by Ctrl+V and M, so do

s/^M//g

This worked for me:

1. Set file format to unix (\n line ending)
2. save the file

So in vim:

:set ff=unix
:w

First, use :set ff? to figure out the file format your file is.

I guess it could be unix, then the problem is your file was created with fileformat=dos adding "^M^J" to the line end but read with flieformat=unix only removing the "^J" from the line end, leaving the "^M" there.

Just input :e ++ff=dos in Vim command line to change your file's format from unix to dos. It should solve the problem. If not, :%s/\r//g should help you out.

On Solaris:

:%s/<CTRL+V><CTRL+M>//g

that is:

:%s/^M//g

That means:

• % = all lines,
• s = substitute,
• ^M = what you desire to substitute
• // = replace with nothing
• g = globally (not only the first occurrance)

None of these worked for me, so I tried this, which worked:

type :%s/

press CTRL-VCTRL-M

type //g

press Enter

So the overall command in Vim shoud look like :%s/^M//g

What this does: :%s (find and replace) /^M/ (that symbol) / (with no chars) g (globally).

In command mode in VIM:

:e ++ff=dos | setl ff=unix | up

e ++ff=dos - force open file in dos format.

setl ff=unix - convert file to unix format.

up - save file only when has been modified.

^M gives unwanted line breaks. To handle this we can use the sed command as follows:

sed 's/\r//g'

Use one of these commands:

:%s/\r//g

Or

:%s/\r\(\n\)/\1/g

When in windows, try :%s/<C-Q><C-M>/g

" This function preserves the list of jumps

fun! Dos2unixFunction()
let _s=@/
let l = line(".")
let c = col(".")
try
    set ff=unix
    w!
    "%s/\%x0d$//e
catch /E32:/
    echo "Sorry, the file is not saved."
endtry
let @/=_s
call cursor(l, c)
endfun
com! Dos2Unix keepjumps call Dos2unixFunction()

Without needing to use Ctrl: :%s/\r$//

Alternatively, there are open-source utilities called dos2unix and unix2dos available that do this very thing. On a linux system they are probably installed by default; for a windows system you can download them from http://www.bastet.com/ amongst others.

There are many other answers to this question, but still, the following works best for me, as I needed a command line solution:

vim -u NONE -c 'e ++ff=dos' -c 'w ++ff=unix' -c q myfile

Explanation:

• Without loading any .vimrc files, open myfile
• Run :e ++ff=dos to force a reload of the entire file as dos line endings.
• Run :w ++ff=unix to write the file using unix line endings
• Quit vim

use dos2unix utility if the file was created on windows, use mac2unix utility if the file was created on mac. :)

:g/^M/s// /g

If you type ^M using Shift+6 Caps+M it won't accept.

You need to type ctrl+v ctrl+m.

Within vim, look at the file format — DOS or Unix:

:set filetype=unix

:set fileformat=unix

The file will be written back without carriage return (CR, ^M) characters.

in order to get the ^M character to match I had to visually select it and then use the OS copy to clipboard command to retrieve it. You can test it by doing a search for the character before trying the replace command.

/^M

should select the first bad line

:%s/^M/\r/g

will replace all the errant ^M with carriage returns.

This is as functions in MacVim, which is based on gvim 7.

EDIT:

Having this problem again on my Windows 10 machine, which has Ubuntu for Windows, and I think this is causing fileformat issues for vim. In this case changing the ff to unix, mac, or dos did nothing other than to change the ^M to ^J and back again.

The solution in this case:

:%s/\r$/ /g
:%s/ $//g

The reason I went this route is because I wanted to ensure I was being non-destructive with my file. I could have :%s/\r$//g but that would have deleted the carriage returns right out, and could have had unexpected results. Instead we convert the singular CR character, here a ^M character, into a space, and then remove all spaces at the end of lines (which for me is a desirable result regardless)

Sorry for reviving an old question that has long since been answered, but there seemed to be some confusion afoot and I thought I'd help clear some of that up since this is coming up high in google searches.

Or instead of using vim you can just fix the line breaks using this command

fromdos <filename.txt>

Hope it helps!

What about just: :%s/\r//g That totally worked for me.

What this does is just to clean the end of line of all lines, it removes the ^M and that's it.

sed s/^M//g file1.txt > file2.txt

where ^M is typed by simultaneously pressing the 3 keys, ctrl + v + m

In my case,

Nothing above worked, I had a CSV file copied to Linux machine from my mac and I used all the above commands but nothing helped but the below one

tr "\015" "\n" < inputfile > outputfile

I had a file in which ^M characters were sandwitched between lines something like below

Audi,A4,35 TFSi Premium,,CAAUA4TP^MB01BNKT6TG,TRO_WBFB_500,Trico,CARS,Audi,A4,35 TFSi Premium,,CAAUA4TP^MB01BNKTG0A,TRO_WB_T500,Trico,

To use sed on MacOS, do this:

sed -i.bak $'s/\r//' <filename>

Explanation: The $'STRING' syntax here pertains to the bash shell. Macs don't treat \r as special character. By quoting the command string in $'' you're telling the shell to replace \r with the actual \r character specified in the ANSI-C standard.

None of these suggestions were working for me having managed to get a load of ^M line breaks while working with both vim and eclipse. I suspect that I encountered an outside case but in case it helps anyone I did.

:%s/.$//g

And it sorted out my problem

On Linux and Mac OS, the following works,

:%s/^V^M/^V^M/g

where ^V^M means type Ctrl+V, then Ctrl+M.

_{Note: on Windows you probably want to use ^Q instead of ^V, since by default ^V is mapped to paste text.}

This worked for me:

:% s/\r\n/\r

I did this with sed:

sed -i -e 's/\r/\n/g' filename

Simple thing that worked for me

dos2unix   filename

A file I had created with BBEdit seen in MacVim was displaying a bunch of ^M line returns instead of regular ones. The following string replace solved the issue - hope this helps:

:%s/\r/\r/g

It's interesting because I'm replacing line breaks with the same character, but I suppose Vim just needs to get a fresh \r to display correctly. I'd be interested to know the underlying mechanics of why this works.

Over a serial console all the vi and sed solutions didn't work for me. I had to:

cat inputfilename | tr -d '\r' > outputfilename

I've spent an afternoon struggling with \n ctrl-v 012 (both of which supply me with null). & laboured through this thread until I reached metagrapher's.

\r worked fine for me!

/),/s/),/)\r/g

turned something like this:

blacklist-extra:i386 (0.4.1, 0.4.1+nmu1), libmount1:i386 (2.20.1-5.1, 2.20.1 -5.2), libblkid1:i386 (2.20.1-5.1, 2.20.1-5.2), libapt-pkg4.12:i386 (0.9.7.4 , 0.9.7.5), nmap:i386 (6.00-0.1, 6.00-0.2), libsane-common:i386 (1.0.22-7.3,

into something like this:

26 libwv-1.2-4:i386 (1.2.9-3, automatic)
27 openjdk-6-jre-headless:i386 (6b24-1.11.4-3, automatic)
28 jed:i386 (0.99.19-2.1)

Magic. I am profoundly grateful

Ctrl+M minimizes my window, but Ctrl+Enter actually inserts a ^M character. I also had to be sure not to lift off the Ctrl key between presses.

So the solution for me was:

:%s/<Ctrl-V><Ctrl-Enter>/\r/g

Where <Ctrl-V><Ctrl-Enter> means to press and hold Ctrl, press and release V, press and release Enter, and then release Ctrl.

If you are working on a Windows-generated file

The above solution will add an additional line between existing lines, because there is already an invisible \r after the ^M.

To prevent this, you want to delete the ^M characters without replacing them.

:%s/<Ctrl-V><Ctrl-Enter>//g

Where % means "in this buffer," s means "substitute," / means "(find) the following pattern," <Ctrl-V><Ctrl-Enter> refers to the keys to press to get the ^M character (see above), // means "with nothing" (or, "with the pattern between these two slashes, which is empty"), and g is a flag meaning "globally," as opposed to the first occurrence in a line.

Command

:%s/<Ctrl-V><Ctrl-M>/\r/g

Where <Ctrl-V><Ctrl-M> means type Ctrl+V then Ctrl+M.

Explanation

:%s

substitute, % = all lines

<Ctrl-V><Ctrl-M>

^M characters (the Ctrl-V is a Vim way of writing the Ctrl ^ character and Ctrl-M writes the M after the regular expression, resulting to ^M special character)

/\r/

with new line (\r)

g

And do it globally (not just the first occurrence on the line).

None of the above worked for me. (substitution on \r, ^M, ctrl-v-ctrl-m ) I used copy and paste to paste my text into a new file.

If you have macros that interfere, you can try :set paste before the paste operation and :set nopaste after.

To save keystrokes, you can avoid typing Ctrl+VCtrl+M by placing this in a mapping. Just open a file containing a ^M character, yank it, and paste it into a line like this in your .vimrc:

nnoremap <Leader>d :%s/^M//g<CR>

In vim, use command:

:%s/\r\n/\r/g

Where you want to search and replace:

\r\n

into

\r

and the

/g

is for global

Note that this is the same as the answer by @ContextSwitch but with the gobal flag

Just removeset binary in your .vimrc!