Convert ^M (Windows) line breaks to normal line breaks

Question

Vim shows ^M on every line ending.

How do I replace this with a normal line break in a file opened in Vim?

possible duplicate of [Convert DOS line endings to Linux line endings in vim](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/82726/convert-dos-line-endings-to-linux-line-endings-in-vim) — cfi, Sep 11 '15 at 11:26
Please change the solution to the [fileformat change](http://stackoverflow.com/a/22816221/131120) because that's the most clean solution. — erikbstack, Oct 13 '16 at 20:20
I know this question is about vim, but some other Google searches also land in this thread. So, if you have Eclipse installed on your system you could convert the line delimiter for either a single file or a complete folder tree of files with a few clicks: https://stackoverflow.com/a/7019737/1364747 — Teddy, Jul 04 '17 at 06:18
I like how you call normal line breaks "normal" -- in contrast to those ^M line breaks :-) — DerMike, May 06 '20 at 11:57
@DerMike I guess all those fancy standard Internet protocols are just abnormal then? — 0xC0000022L, Jan 10 '23 at 17:34

score 615 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

615

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)

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

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

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answered May 01 '09 at 12:48

LeopardSkinPillBoxHat

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@luckytaxi - what does it do for you? – LeopardSkinPillBoxHat Jul 22 '10 at 01:19
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it removed the ^M characters but doesn't insert the carriage return. – sdot257 Jul 23 '10 at 18:33
This doesn't work, at least on Ubuntu. I get the error `E486: Pattern not found: ` – jumpnett Nov 27 '12 at 19:23
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I actually typed the string ''. Did you mean type Ctrl+V, then Ctrl+M? – jumpnett Nov 27 '12 at 21:41
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@jumpnett - You need to push the key chords Ctrl-V/Ctrl-M, not enter that as verbatim text. – LeopardSkinPillBoxHat Nov 28 '12 at 00:39
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This was the correct solution when I had this problem. It's not quite as simple as that though. This works if the file has CRLF endings, while the :%s/^V^M/^V^M/g approach works if converting from one to the other. The settings when the file is opened _and_ when it is updated by Git in the background can affect this, because Vim may guess the mode when opening the file, but will read in everything if the file changes while open. – Leo Mar 21 '13 at 15:30
fail, now I have a one-line file – ppostma1 May 20 '13 at 19:40
Works for me in ArchLinux :-), Vim 7.3 – Soundararajan Oct 03 '13 at 08:33
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This is definitely the right answer for the question, if you have a ^M followed by a new line, you want to keep the newline but remove the ^M. Doing the other substitution below double-spaces your file. – dlamblin Oct 16 '13 at 17:38
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If you're still missing a carriage return (i.e. the ^M has been removed but everything is wrapped on a single line), do: `:%s//\r/g` (where \r replaces the ^M with a newline). – William Turrell Apr 03 '14 at 18:28
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If you are running Vim on Windows, then you'll need to use instead of . – GrandAdmiral Jun 26 '14 at 18:23
For me, using MacVim @netpoetica's solution way down below was the only one here that worked. – b_dev Jul 07 '14 at 03:58
The OP said replace, not remove. – Aug 12 '14 at 11:31
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Make sure you actually press Ctrl-V and Ctrl-M as opposed to just copy and pasting the string. – a2f0 Dec 19 '15 at 16:54
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I always forget how to do this, and always end up back on this question when I go looking. Thanks for the 18th time. – jgitter Feb 16 '16 at 20:27
This answer should be my homepage – Reza S Jul 12 '16 at 19:09
When dealing with a text file that was mangled by Windows, I only needed to replace the ^M with "" (the empty string). – HoldOffHunger Oct 18 '16 at 17:12
Further to @GrandAdmiral : GVim on windows could not find `^M` but it found `^M$` !?!? example: `:%s/^M$//g` worked for me – roblogic Feb 15 '17 at 04:01
if you only want to remove the ^M: `:%s//g`. Also I find out that `/g` is not necessary(gvim, windows) – ZhaoGang Jul 21 '17 at 03:34
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Note that this does not work if the file is loaded as a dos file. – Maarten Derickx Oct 30 '17 at 11:23
only this worked for me. If you don't want new line, don't add \r. `:%s///g` – Sardeep Lakhera Aug 16 '18 at 12:01
This answer added extra line breaks to my file ... the accepted answer worked fine. `:e ++ff=dos` – Sep 13 '18 at 18:01
On a Mac with iTerm2 one really has to use the 'control' key, not the 'command'. – robsch Jan 26 '21 at 08:04

score 427 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 17 '17 at 13:45

427

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.}

edited Jan 17 '17 at 13:45

Martin Tournoij

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answered May 01 '09 at 12:47

Paul Tomblin

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Why did this get a downvote? It works, even when your file is mashed onto one line because it's got the wrong line end. – Paul Tomblin May 01 '09 at 13:12
It really works and is exactly what you need when all your text is on one line. – Bart Schuller May 01 '09 at 13:34
Shouldn't %s/^V^M/^V^M/g be %s/^V^M//g ? – Adnan May 01 '09 at 14:01
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No. My way replaces whatever is the line end in the file with the correct line end. – Paul Tomblin May 01 '09 at 14:21
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This doesn't work, at least on Ubuntu. I get the error `E486: Pattern not found: ^V^M`. – jumpnett Nov 27 '12 at 19:27
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@jumpnett, you didn't type it right. colon, then percent, then s, then slash, then control v, then control m, then slash, then control v, then control m, then slash, then g, then return. – Paul Tomblin Nov 27 '12 at 21:19
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I didn't type it right. It does replace the `^M`'s, but it also adds an extra newline. What I want is `:%s/^V^M//g`, but that's neither here no there, since I didn't ask the question. – jumpnett Nov 27 '12 at 21:35
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This is the correct solution if your file appears to have no newlines at all (i.e. it is one long line). If your file appears to have line endings _and_ the ^M character, then this will add an extra line break between every line. – Leo Mar 21 '13 at 15:31
@Leo, the question specifically asks to convert ^M to a linebreak, which is what my answer does (unlike the accepted answer, which removes ^M). – Paul Tomblin Mar 21 '13 at 16:02
@PaulTomblin yes, you're quite right. Apologies. The problem I had was subtly different - ^M appearing in `git diff` but not in Vim because of conversion when the file is openend. I had to use Jonathan Leffler's answer in combination with both yours and LeopardSkinPillBoxHat's to wrangle the various files. Perhaps I should have asked a new question, but last time I did so for a slight variation I was told it was a dupe! – Leo Mar 22 '13 at 11:27
@PaulTomblin -- your answer works for one long line with ^M's in it. If there are lots of lines, each ending with a ^M, then the accepted answer works since those are really carriage-return/line-feed pairs. – LavaSlider Sep 03 '13 at 17:07
@LavaSlider, my experience is that it works for any file with any number of lines. – Paul Tomblin Sep 03 '13 at 17:28
But if the line ends with "", ":%s/^V^M/^V^M/g" will change it to "", inserting a blank line. Maybe it's different versions of `vim` but I typed in: hello^V^Mhow^V^Mare^V^Myou^V^M[return]hello^V^M[return]how^V^M[return]are^V^M[return]you^V^M[esc] (where [return] is hitting the return/enter key and [esc] is the escape key). Before executing the command the file has 5 lines, the first with "hello^Mhow^Mare^Myou^M", the next four with one word followed by "^M". After ":%s/^V^M/^V^M/g" there are 13 lines, 1 word per line except blank lines at lines 5,7,9,11 & 13 (on a mac). Try it. – LavaSlider Sep 04 '13 at 14:12
That's not my experience with real files moved from Windows to Linux or Windows to Mac. – Paul Tomblin Sep 04 '13 at 14:16
This one works for me, files from windows, edited on osx, the question is, why this works, it's a bit odd isn't it, replacing with the same character sequence. – O.O Oct 07 '13 at 02:05
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This is for a different problem when your file has NO new lines in it, which I'll admit is more common. FYI ^M can be matched by \r – dlamblin Oct 16 '13 at 18:17
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This is a deeply mysterious command, but it works for me on a mac. – Eric Walker Dec 19 '13 at 00:23
deeply mysterious indeed and works for me on every server I tried it on from redhat, to ubuntu, to os x. – But those new buttons though.. Dec 04 '14 at 20:37
Yep! Works on cygwin too. I had a file created on Ubuntu/scp'ed on to Windows/opened with vim under Cygwin. It had one long line with 1660 ^M's in it. Running this command gave: `1660 substitutions on 1 line` and the file now has 1661 lines. Yay! – Kedar Mhaswade Jun 12 '15 at 16:43
This is the correct answer and not the one that has been accepted. – Ashesh Jul 20 '15 at 08:13
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I found the equivalent `%s/\r/\r/g` worked well on MacVim for a file showing only `^M` at end of lines (one long line in MacVim terms). Clearly \r means different things in the pattern vs replacement parts of this command. – RichVel Sep 12 '15 at 09:55
This works like charm! on OSX+vim. :) Thank you so much. Highly annoying to have ^M in file. – Death Metal Sep 01 '16 at 18:27
Your tip on using ^Q on Windows should get an additional +1000 points! Thanks. – Sabuncu Mar 11 '17 at 22:21
This didn't worked for me, but RichVel comment %s/\r/\r/g worked for me. Would love to see an answer who explain why this answer didn't worked, but \r does (and another solutions people put). There are a lot of different solutions to this problem, and don't understand what is happening resolves to try everything until something works. – lcjury May 30 '18 at 15:19
@Adnan yes, replacing it with nothing worked for me. – pacoverflow Sep 13 '21 at 08:41
The CTRL-Q tip fixed my muscle memory in WSL. I could not figure out why it wasn't working as it always does but it makes sense after you explained it. :) – Mark Sep 29 '22 at 17:53

Jonathan Leffler · Answer 3 · 2012-11-28T00:43:40.007

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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.

edited Nov 28 '12 at 00:43

answered May 01 '09 at 12:57

Jonathan Leffler

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use :set fileformat=unix For most configurations filetype only changes the syntax type being used. – derGral Jun 21 '11 at 07:55
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This fixed the bug I was having... Vim started thinking my UNIX formatted file was windows and newly changed lines were showing ^M in the git diff. – Thomas Hunter II Mar 23 '12 at 03:41
Must be system dependent. Today, this one worked. The set command is done within vim, btw. – gbarry Nov 28 '12 at 00:36
Small gotcha I found: if Git updates a file in the background (due to a checkout) and you have set this to something other than what Vim guessed when opening the file, Vim does not appear to reconvert when reloading the buffer. You'll end up with a bunch of extraneous characters. You can then use one of the %s/^V^M/.../g approaches above. Which one depends on exactly what formats you're converting to and from. – Leo Mar 21 '13 at 15:35
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great!because the fileformat is dos, set it to be unix, and it's ok – zhaozhi Jan 14 '14 at 07:57
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This also works on vi BTW, and you can do `set ff=unix` as a little shortcut in the same way `ft` is a shortcut for `filetype` – Posva Aug 12 '15 at 13:34
@Posva: Thanks for the abbreviations! – Jonathan Leffler Aug 12 '15 at 14:13
I like this solution because I don't have to do what I used to do (a) leave vi, (b) vi -b , (c) :s/^M//. Thanks. – Jeff Holt Mar 01 '17 at 17:41

score 155 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 02 '14 at 15:30

155

This is the only thing that worked for me:

:e ++ff=dos

Found it at: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/File_format

answered Apr 02 '14 at 15:30

Pam

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Worked on windows7 Vim7.4 – schuess Nov 09 '15 at 19:05
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`:e ++ff=dos` followed by `:set ff=unix` will convert the endings to a sane format. – Mateen Ulhaq Mar 02 '18 at 02:22
Solution's response didn't work for me, only @MateenUlhaq commands helped me. – Edenshaw Jul 26 '18 at 17:05
Hmm, I suspect a whole host of Internet protocols must be considered "insane", if only LF line endings are deemed "sane" and it is supposed to be some sort of dichotomy?! ... personally I find the "Unix" way no more legitimate than the "DOS" (and Internet protocol) way. – 0xC0000022L Jan 10 '23 at 17:30

score 125 · Answer 5 · edited Dec 24 '22 at 01:53

125

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:

:%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.

edited Dec 24 '22 at 01:53

starball

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answered Sep 27 '12 at 04:46

netpoetica

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There's a tendency for search functions to accept broader rules for recognizing end-of-line sequences. But \r has a specific meaning when it's being written as data. – gbarry Nov 28 '12 at 01:18
This worked for me in Windows gVim to sort out a file that had no line breaks, just lots of ^M instead. – flash Jan 30 '14 at 23:06
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From all the solutions offered on this page, this was the only pattern that worked for me in removing ^M from a csv file. Using MacVim. – B6431 May 21 '14 at 15:45
+1 Worked for me too while SSHing to Ubuntu Trusty from Windows using Mobaterm – Carl Jun 25 '14 at 22:12
So, this seemed to replace all of the `\r` characters with `\n` despite specifying `\r` as the replacement. Not complaining, that's exactly what I wanted. Just weird. – donut Oct 02 '14 at 18:04
[This answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/12388814/264745) cleared up for me why the search and replace patterns are the same. I would think that has no effect, but they are interpreted differently in each context - I haven't seen that mentioned yet. Short answer seems to be that "\n was already taken". – dcc310 Dec 20 '16 at 22:13

score 35 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 07 '12 at 04:01

35

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.

answered Mar 07 '12 at 04:01

Sam Chen

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I had to do both. `:e ++ff=dos` then `:set ff=unix` and `:w` – Max Oct 11 '16 at 14:04

Metagrapher · Answer 7 · 2017-09-12T13:48:45.687

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.

pressing ctrl-v ctrl-m may work to insert the character, as well, fwiw. but the \r is what inserts the proper carriage return. — Metagrapher, Nov 26 '11 at 03:06
This is the RIGHT answer. As said above, use to get the literal ^M inserted in the command. — carlosayam, Dec 17 '12 at 04:23
I agree, though I am certain that if that had worked for me at the time of original posting then I wouldn't have posted. ;) — Metagrapher, Dec 18 '12 at 21:34

d-_-b · Answer 8 · 2014-05-31T20:30:48.790

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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).

edited May 31 '14 at 20:30

answered May 10 '14 at 18:51

d-_-b

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Bang on!! Works on Mac. – shamail Oct 10 '17 at 08:42
Nice Answer. Just kills the `^M` though, doesn't replace them with newlines (vim linux, ff=dos). YMMV depending on which of [mac,windows,linux] you have and what fileformat is currently set to ( see with `:set ff?`). Were you on a mac? – RGD2 Jul 01 '21 at 07:27

score 18 · Answer 9 · edited Sep 19 '15 at 08:26

18

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

s/^M//g

edited Sep 19 '15 at 08:26

Sagar Jain

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answered May 01 '09 at 12:47

Andrew Sledge

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score 17 · Answer 10 · answered Oct 06 '15 at 19:46

17

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

answered Oct 06 '15 at 19:46

BHarman

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This is the way I do it as well. I just never remember the command – pixel 67 Nov 02 '16 at 19:48
This is the recommended way to remove these endings. – Metagrapher Sep 11 '17 at 13:57
This worked perfectly for my case as well. – Enis Arik Feb 01 '21 at 15:24
Vim 8.1 gives me `E486: Pattern not found: \r$` for that. – RGD2 Jul 01 '21 at 07:30
This is the best solution, works with **any OS** and **without needing the buffer to be associated with a file**. – adamency Apr 18 '23 at 16:32

score 15 · Answer 11 · answered Nov 07 '14 at 07:30

15

Simple thing that worked for me

dos2unix   filename

answered Nov 07 '14 at 07:30

Shahzeb Khan

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That just removed the ^M characters, rather than replace them with newlines. – carlin.scott Jan 18 '21 at 20:25
this failed to do both for me. `:%s/^M/\r/g` (where the `^M` was CTRL-'VM') worked. – RGD2 Jul 01 '21 at 07:22

score 14 · Answer 12 · edited Sep 17 '15 at 08:11

14

I did this with sed:

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

edited Sep 17 '15 at 08:11

answered Jan 03 '15 at 04:08

Freedom_Ben

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Are you sure this works? On OSX: `sed -e 's/\r/\n/g' <<< 'over and over'` -> `oven and oven` – Armand Jun 29 '18 at 09:59
Yes it works (I use it a lot), but on OSX if you do not have the GNU version of sed installed then it may not work. The version of sed that Apple ships by default is much different (sadly) than the GNU version that ships on all Linux distros. Check out the answer to this question for more help: https://stackoverflow.com/q/30003570/2062384 – Freedom_Ben Jun 29 '18 at 20:07
Thanks @Freedom_Ben. So it sounds like this works for GNU `sed` but not BSD `sed` then (as found on OSX). Anyone fixing linebreaks is probably working with a mix of operating systems, so it's useful to be clear about when the answer will work. – Armand Jul 05 '18 at 14:20

score 10 · Answer 13 · answered Jul 11 '14 at 12:47

10

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.

answered Jul 11 '14 at 12:47

Tonatiuh

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score 10 · Answer 14 · answered Apr 22 '17 at 15:04

10

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

answered Apr 22 '17 at 15:04

Micah Smith

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thank you! this fixed my issue and found it useful to use in scripts – Peddipaga Jun 07 '17 at 23:37

score 8 · Answer 15 · answered Apr 04 '17 at 15:55

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.

score 7 · Answer 16 · edited Dec 01 '16 at 10:07

7

This worked for me:

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

So in vim:

:set ff=unix
:w

edited Dec 01 '16 at 10:07

Mathieu

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answered Nov 30 '16 at 20:30

Stryker

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This one worked for me, while the accepted answer didn't. – Marcello Romani Mar 27 '17 at 21:41

score 7 · Answer 17 · answered Dec 04 '16 at 02:53

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,

score 6 · Answer 18 · answered May 01 '09 at 13:10

6

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.

answered May 01 '09 at 13:10

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

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Blue Diamond · Answer 19 · 2014-09-15T06:51:36.380

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

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

edited Sep 15 '14 at 06:51

answered Aug 04 '14 at 10:07

Blue Diamond

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score 4 · Answer 20 · answered Sep 25 '12 at 12:29

4

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

answered Sep 25 '12 at 12:29

Ramesh

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never heard of mac2unix before, would have upvote again if I could! – Kuf Aug 24 '16 at 20:27
Huray! this is the way to go! – Private Sep 12 '16 at 09:15

score 4 · Answer 21 · edited Mar 10 '19 at 10:29

4

Use one of these commands:

:%s/\r//g

Or

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

edited Mar 10 '19 at 10:29

halfer

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answered Jun 10 '15 at 10:45

Muhammad Reda

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First command simply removes all \r, if you save it like this your file will be destroyed. – Andy K Jan 11 '22 at 08:08

Victor S. · Answer 22 · 2020-12-03T18:42:51.940

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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.

edited Dec 03 '20 at 18:42

answered Dec 03 '20 at 17:52

Victor S.

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score 2 · Answer 23 · answered Dec 06 '13 at 09:18

2

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>

answered Dec 06 '13 at 09:18

agouge

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score 2 · Answer 24 · answered Apr 18 '14 at 01:09

2

This worked for me:

:% s/\r\n/\r

answered Apr 18 '14 at 01:09

ContextSwitch

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Nitin Nain · Answer 25 · 2019-02-20T10:52:34.650

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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.

edited Feb 20 '19 at 10:52

answered Jan 22 '19 at 15:04

Nitin Nain

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rogermushroom · Answer 26 · 2014-04-04T13:28:46.333

1

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

edited Apr 04 '14 at 13:28

answered Apr 03 '14 at 23:16

rogermushroom

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This will remove ANY character at the end of a line. If you have a line that is not, for some reason, terminated by ^M, then you will remove that character also, and would be unexpected. This should not be the case, but in the event that it is, and you don't know this, then you could sully your file in a very hard to identify way. – Metagrapher Sep 11 '17 at 14:00

score 1 · Answer 27 · answered Apr 30 '15 at 05:42

1

: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.

answered Apr 30 '15 at 05:42

Shravan Kumar

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score 1 · Answer 28 · edited Jul 20 '16 at 20:50

1

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

sed 's/\r//g'

edited Jul 20 '16 at 20:50

Nic Nilov

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answered Jul 20 '16 at 11:03

Manoj Kumar

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idk why this was downvoted to -1... because it uses sed? you can do the same substitution inside vim and it _should_ work – Metagrapher Sep 11 '17 at 13:56

score 1 · Answer 29 · answered May 26 '17 at 12:37

1

Just removeset binary in your .vimrc!

answered May 26 '17 at 12:37

falcucci

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In one other thread, "set binary" was recommended to get rid of the auto insert of new line. – nashter Jun 30 '17 at 08:39

score 1 · Answer 30 · answered Dec 02 '20 at 09:20

1

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)

answered Dec 02 '20 at 09:20

Donato Pirozzi

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score 0 · Answer 31 · edited Jan 21 '13 at 16:45

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

score 0 · Answer 32 · answered Mar 17 '13 at 16:39

0

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

fromdos <filename.txt>

Hope it helps!

answered Mar 17 '13 at 16:39

bsmoo

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score 0 · Answer 33 · answered Jul 28 '14 at 15:59

0

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.

answered Jul 28 '14 at 15:59

Cory

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score 0 · Answer 34 · answered Aug 14 '15 at 00:54

0

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

answered Aug 14 '15 at 00:54

markyk

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score 0 · Answer 35 · answered Nov 16 '16 at 12:37

0

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

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

answered Nov 16 '16 at 12:37

robsn

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score 0 · Answer 36 · answered Apr 25 '11 at 23:06

0

" 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()

answered Apr 25 '11 at 23:06

SergioAraujo

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In this case, what's wrong with using *NIX's native dos2unix command? http://linux.die.net/man/1/dos2unix – Metagrapher May 18 '11 at 18:51

score 0 · Answer 37 · answered Jun 22 '23 at 00:38

If you can see the control characters but your searches are unable to find them using the other methods, and dos2unix isn't working, here's what worked for me.

Move your cursor to the ^ character and press * to start a search for it. I had to manually add a carriage return after it (i.e., after the M) in order for the search to select what I wanted. Then you can run your substitution command on your current search by just leaving the pattern term empty.

:%s//\r/g

This will replace all of the ^M characters with newlines (\r) and perform it on every line (g=global)

score -1 · Answer 38 · answered Jan 17 '17 at 12:45

-1

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

answered Jan 17 '17 at 12:45

jiangdongzi

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Can you add some explanation as to why this works, i.e. what are you actually doing with the various parts of that command? – LordWilmore Jan 17 '17 at 13:02
1

This is [just the same as the top answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/811208/660921), except that `` is replace with `` because by default the former is mapped to paste text. – Martin Tournoij Jan 17 '17 at 13:44
^M means "0d0d0a", `:%s//g` will change "0d0d0a" to "0d0a" (0d0a means \n\r). I dont know why, but it really works in this way (0d0d0a→0d0a i.e. ^M→\n\r) in my windows7 OS. – jiangdongzi Jan 18 '17 at 09:43

Convert ^M (Windows) line breaks to normal line breaks

38 Answers38

Command

Explanation

If you are working on a Windows-generated file

Linked

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