CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vimreplacevi
Opal
Opal

Reputation: 84766

How to replace 'strange' signs?

When I open a file using vi I see the following line:

00:00:15:Co<9c> Ty!

What is hidden under <9c> and how can I make a global replacement for all occurrences of this strange sign? File is encoded with UTF-8

Upvotes: 0

Views: 440

Answers (2)

Lithis
Lithis

Reputation: 1377

Your file contains the byte 0x9c, as previously mentioned in Ingo Karkat's answer. When a text file contains bytes in the range 0x80–0x9f, it oftentimes indicates that the file is in Windows-1252 encoding (or a different Windows code page for non–Western-European locales).

To view the file as a Windows-1252–encoded file in Vim, enter :e ++encoding=windows-1252. The text in the question then appears as

00:00:15:Coœ Ty!

I can't tell you if that is the correct character, though. If instead the intended encoding is Windows-1250, for Central European languages, the command :e ++encoding=windows-1250 will make the text appear as

00:00:15:Coś Ty!

Upvotes: 1

Ingo Karkat
Ingo Karkat

Reputation: 172540

The <9c> is the single character with the value 0x9c = decimal 156; in UTF-8, this is U+009C String Terminator. You can replace it via one of the following alternatives:

  • Yank the character (yl) and insert it in a :substitute command via :help c_CTRL-R: :%s/<C-r>"//g
  • Enter the character via its hex value in the :substitute command: :%s/<C-v>x9c//g; cp. :help i_CTRL-V_digit.
  • Enter the character via the special \%x9c regular expression atom in the :substitute command: :%s/\%x9c//g; cp. :help /\%x.

Upvotes: 1

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