Quote:
Originally Posted by
apmcd47
An alternative to using od is cat -vET or cat -A. This will show all non-printing characters, tab characters and line-ends; I think the set list command in vi just shows the line ends and tab characters.
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
No, the standards say that the list command in
vi and
ex causes <newline> characters to be displayed as a <dollar-sign> at the end of the line they terminate, the <backslash> character as two <backslash> characters, and other non-printable or control characters to be displayed as backslash escape sequences.
I have seen some versions of
ex,
vi, and
vim that print control characters (other than <newline>) as the two character sequence
^x where
x is the key on the keyboard that would be pressed while the control key is being held down that would produce that character (instead of printing the backslash escape sequences required by the standards), but I haven't seen any version of
ex,
vi, or
vim that fails to print non-printable characters as identifiable character sequences when printing in list mode.