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 http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Search_and_replace :

When Searching

...

\n is newline, \r is CR (carriage return = Ctrl-M = ^M)

When Replacing

...

\r is newline, \n is a null byte (0x00).