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From: keithe@tekgvs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Invisible Ascii with VI
Message-ID: <2705@tekgvs.TEK.COM>
Date: Tue, 29-Sep-87 14:52:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekgvs.2705
Posted: Tue Sep 29 14:52:00 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Oct-87 01:03:53 EDT
References: <258@unx1.UUCP> <469@devon.UUCP>
Reply-To: keithe@tekgvs.UUCP (Keith Ericson)
Distribution: world
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR.
Lines: 22
Keywords: vi

In article <469@devon.UUCP> paul@devon.UUCP (Paul Sutcliffe Jr.) writes:
<In article <258@unx1.UUCP> andy@unx1.UUCP (Andy Clews) writes:
<> I'd like to be able to get rid of [^M at tend of line]
<> with, say, a global substitute.
<
<I thought this reply might be of general interest, so I'm posting it.
<
<Your "1,$s/^V^M$//" didn't work because the search pattern didn't match
<anything in your text file.  You asked vi to find all lines where the
<character just before the end of line ($) was a carriage-return.  This
<pattern will not match because the lines in your text were terminated
<by a CR/LF pair, so there was a line-feed between the "^M" and the "$".
<

Yet my technique of eliminating these pesky ^M chreatures is

	%s/.$//

to eliminate the last character of the line, on all lines. This, by
your explanation, shouldn't work, but in fact does work. What gives?

keith