SUMMARY:show characters

From: Sajjad Ahmed (SAHMED@fs2.ba.umist.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Mar 22 2000 - 03:09:11 CST


Hi Sun Managers,

The overwhelming response was to use :set list to display
characters from within vi (:set nolist to turn them off)

Other aproaches involved using od (cat file | od -c > /tmp/filename)
and a binary editor called beav which i haven't tried.

cat -vet filename also works well

If emacs(1) is installed, you can use the hexl-find-file and hexl-mode
commands to display and edit the binary content of files.

Many thanks to all that replied (~40 messages!)

Original Question:
>
> Is there any way of displaying 'hidden' characters in a text file
such
> as spaces, newlines, tabs from within vi or from a utility.
>
> e.g to distinguish between...
>
> this line has no characters
>
> and
>
> this line has a trailing space and a return line<space><returnline>
>

SAhmed.



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