What is `^M` and how do I get rid of it?

The ^M is a carriage-return character. If you see this, you're probably looking at a file that originated in the DOS/Windows world, where an end-of-line is marked by a carriage return/newline pair, whereas in the Unix world, end-of-line is marked by a single newline.

Read this article for more detail, and also the Wikipedia entry for newline.

This article discusses how to set up vim to transparently edit files with different end-of-line markers.

If you have a file with ^M at the end of some lines and you want to get rid of them, use this in Vim:

:s/^M$//

(Press Ctrl+V Ctrl+M to insert that ^M.)

A simpler way to do this is to use the following command:

dos2unix filename

This command works with path patterns as well, Eg

dos2unix path/name*

If it doesn't work, try using different mode:

dos2unix -c mac filename

• -c Set conversion mode. Where CONVMODE is one of: ascii, 7bit, iso, mac with ascii being the default.

This worked for me

:e ++ff=dos 

The :e ++ff=dos command tells Vim to read the file again, forcing dos file format. Vim will remove CRLF and LF-only line endings, leaving only the text of each line in the buffer.

then

:set ff=unix 

and finally

:wq