UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi, I need to do a global search and replacement of a non-ascii character. Let me first give the background of my problem.

Very frequently, I need to copy set of references from different sources. Typically, a reference would like this:

Banumathy et al., 2002 G. Banumathy, V. Singh and U. Tatu, Host chaperones are recruited in membrane-bound complexes by Plasmodium falciparum, The Journal of Biological Chemistry 277 (2002), pp. 3902-3912.

When I copy a set of references on to a 'vi' editor screen, the hyphen (-) character, which is invariably present in the pagination details, is shown as
<96> character. When I use the command, cat -vt <filename>, char <96> is shown as M-BM-^V

My question is, how do I search for the non-ascii character, <96> , using vi editor.

Many thanks,

Francis

NCSI, IISc, Bangalore, India

Not sure about standard vi -- might depend on your OS. If you're using vim, it's no problem:

Code:

/CTRL-Vu0096

The / starts the search, as you knows this already. The CTRL-V enters a special mode (hold down CONTROL key while typing V). Now "u" stands for unicode or UTF8, and 0096 is character 96 in said mode. This is explained in the vim help pages under "mbyte-composing"