Why is \r a newline for Vim?

Question

From question How to replace a character for a newline in Vim?. You have to use \\r when replacing text for a newline, like this

:%s/%/\\r/g
         


        

Answer 1

From vim docs on patterns:

\r matches

\n matches an end-of-line - When matching in a string instead of buffer text a literal newline character is matched.