How to replace a character by a newline in Vim?

 

To replace a character with a newline in Vim, you can use the :s (substitute) command with a specific pattern. Here's how to do it with an example:

Let's say you have the following text in your Vim buffer, and you want to replace all occurrences of the character 'x' with a newline:

vbnet

This is some text with x characters.
There are also x's here.

Here's how you can achieve this:

1. Press Esc to ensure you're in Normal mode.

2. Use the :s command with the pattern :s/x/\r/g. The \r in the replacement part represents a newline character.

   vim

2. :%s/x/\r/g
   

   • %s: This specifies that the substitution should be performed on the entire document. You can replace % with a range or specific line numbers if needed.

   • x: This is the character you want to replace.

   • \r: This is the newline character.

   • g: This flag indicates that the substitution should be global, meaning it replaces all occurrences on each line.

3. Press Enter.

After running this command, Vim will replace all occurrences of 'x' with newline characters, and your text will look like this:

vbnet

This is some text with 
 characters.
There are also 
's here.

Now, the character 'x' has been replaced with newline characters in the entire document.