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

:help NL-used-for-Nul

Technical detail:

characters in the file are stored as in memory. In the display they are shown as "^@". The translation is done when reading and writing files. To match a with a search pattern you can just enter CTRL-@ or "CTRL-V 000". This is probably just what you expect. Internally the character is replaced with a in the search pattern. What is unusual is that typing CTRL-V CTRL-J also inserts a , thus also searches for a in the file. {Vi cannot handle characters in the file at all}

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