How to search for a character the displays as "<85>" in Vim

Question

I have a file that was converted from EBCDIC to ASCII. Where there used to be new lines there are now characters that show up as <85> (a symbol representing a single character, not the four characters it appears to be) and the whole file is on one line. I want to search for them and replace them all with new lines again, but I don't know how.

I tried putting the cursor over one and using * to search for the next occurrence, hoping that it might show up in my / search history. That didn't work, it just searched for the word that followed the <85> character.

I searched Google, but didn't see anything obvious.

My goal is to build a search and replace string like:

:%s/<85>/\n/g

Which currently just gives me:

E486: Pattern not found: <85>

You can press `y` to copy a single character. – Josh Lee Feb 02 '10 at 15:29 — Josh Lee, Feb 02 '10 at 15:29

score 26 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 24 '20 at 02:59

I found "Find & Replace non-printable characters in vim" searching Google. It seems like you should be able to do:

:%s/\%x85/\r/gc

Omit the c to do the replacement without prompting, try with c first to make sure it is doing what you want it to do.

In Vim, typing :h \%x gives more details. In addition to \%x, you can use \%d, \%o, \%u and \%U for decimal, octal, up to four and up to eight hexadecimal characters.

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 24 '20 at 03:01

2

For special character searching, win1252 for example, for the case of <80>,<90>,<9d>... type:

/\%u80, \/%u90, /\%u9d ...

from the editor.

Similarly for octal, decimal, hex, type: /\%oYourCode, /\%dYourCode, /\%xYourCode.

edited Apr 24 '20 at 03:01

the Tin Man

158,662
42
215
303

answered Apr 23 '20 at 16:36

韓家軍大華府斗內團

21
1

ghostdog74 · Answer 3 · 2010-01-18T16:05:56.767

-4

try this: :%s/<85>/^M/g

note: press Ctrl-V together then M

or if you don't mind using another tool,

awk '{gsub("<85>","\n")}1' file

edited Jan 18 '10 at 16:05

answered Jan 18 '10 at 16:00

ghostdog74

327,991
56
259
343

The \n isn't the problem. It's the <85>. Thanks though. – Thomas G Henry LLC Jan 18 '10 at 16:01
The "<85>" is a single character, not a four character string of <, 8, 5, and >. – Thomas G Henry LLC Jan 18 '10 at 16:10
echo '------------------------------------------------------------------------- BEGIN ----------------------------------------------------------------------- '<85>binDir=...etc, etc... – Thomas G Henry LLC Jan 18 '10 at 16:15

How to search for a character the displays as "<85>" in Vim

3 Answers3