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

Another aspect to this is that \0, which is traditionally NULL, is taken in s//\0/ to mean "the whole matched pattern". (Which, by the way, is redundant with, and longer than, &).

• So you can't use \0 to mean NULL, so you use \n
• So you can't use \n to mean \n, so you use \r.
• So you can't use \r to mean \r, but I don't know who would want to add that char on purpose.

—☈