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.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:14:05 CDT