Re: [Groff] Vim/formatting question (WordPerfect files)

[Zvezdan Petkovic]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 03:15:08PM -0600, Clarke Echols wrote:
> Words are separated by a single character that displays in vim as
> a (blue) couple of characters: ( ~@ ) and there are other characters
> showing up as ( ^U, ^^, ^@, ) etc.    I know how to do regular
> expression search and replace for control characters like ^U, but
> this ~@ stuff is something I don't know how to specify in a search
> string.

Select that blue character ~@ and save it in a file (say, tryme.txt).
Then run from a command line

        od -x tryme.txt

See what hex code it is (for example, ^@ is 0d).
Then in Vim say

        :%s/\%x0d/ /g

or whatever you want to replace it with instead of space.

> Any clues?  Or an easy way to convert this to plain text without
> buying a bunch of software?

Take a look at

        :help regex

in Vim for more regex features in Vim.

> I'm a vim/groff bigot and don't like canned "authoring" software--
> especially if I have to pay for it. :-)

I don't blame you. :-)

Best regards,

        ZP