Hiding ^M in emacs

Question

Sometimes I need to read log files that have ^M (control-M) in the line endings. I can do a global replace to get rid of them, but then something more is logged to the log

Answer 1

If you'd like to view the log files and simply hide the ^M's rather than actually replace them you can use Drew Adam's highlight extension to do so.

You can either write elisp code or make a keyboard macro to do the following

select the whole buffer
hlt-highlight-regexp-region
C-q C-M
hlt-hide-default-face

This will first highlight the ^M's and then hide them. If you want them back use `hlt-show-default-face'