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? -- -- You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "vim_use" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
