Re: vim: want control character in substitution string

On Monday, March 11, 2013 3:05:53 PM UTC-5, Paul wrote:
> I have an record-based data file for an application that uses control
>
> characters in some fields as flags for certain GUI options, e.g.:
>
>
>
> ^@
>
> ^A
>
>
>
> It's barbaric to try and manipulate the data using the GUI, and I've
>
> taken to vim'ing the text file. However, it's rough going because the
>
> fields aren't vertically aligned. It would be much better if I could
>
> massage the data in Excel, but the text import process seems to ignore
>
> the control characters. I can use the vim command line to replace the
>
> control characters with their visual counterpart i.e. ^@ is replaced
>
> by carat and at-sign (I'll refer to these as fake control
>
> characters). After importing into Excel and mushing the data, I
>
> export it to text and use vim to clean it up, including converting the
>
> fake control characters back to real control characters.
>
>
>
> Therein lies my problem. When I use the command line, this works:
>
>
>
> :% s=^@=^@=g
>
>
>
> where the first ^@ is a fake control character while the second one is
>
> real, obtained by prefixing the keystroke with ctrl-V. However, when
>
> I try to put this command in a vim script that I can ":source", it is
>
> interpretted as an error.
>
>
>
> After much reading, I found that I can match ^@ with \%x00 in the
>
> search string, but I haven't found a way to specify control characters
>
> in the substitution string. Is there a way?

I think replacing with \n will work. See :help sub-replace-special. ^@ is special because Vim uses it internally to represent end-of-line. Most other control characters should work.

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