replacing ^M with emacs

[Jerry McAllister]

> 
> Thanks Peter,
> 
> where is the logic here?  What is control-q for and what is control-j 
> for?  I am trying to figure out how I could have figured that out.

They are ASCII characters.   For example, the ^M you wanted to get
rid of is CTRL-M.    There are ASCII tables in various places.
A quick search should turn up a few.   The assignment of the 
characters are ancient and traditional and somewhat weird by
how things are currently used, but will probably continue to stay
that way.

Line-Feed, for example - which is that character that marks the end
of a line in text files, means it causes the printer to move the 
paper up one line - in old line printers and teletypes.  CTRL-M or ^M
is a RETURN (also ENTER nowdays) and that caused the print head to
return to the beginning of the line.  By the time UNIX came along,
it wasn't necessary to use both characters to move the paper and print
head because those were virtual.  So, they just used one character - 
the line feed.   But, MS-DOS and some others continued to use the
pair to mean a new line for some reason - maybe the original association
with IBM, although they didn't use ASCII, but EBCDIC - another animal.

So, look up an ASCII chart with explanations and you can make an
educated guess on the meanings.

////jerry

> 
> also is there a better page than the one I am using below to figure all 
> these keystrokes out?
> 
> http://www.math.uh.edu/~bgb/emacs_keys.html
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Noah
> 
> 
> Peter A. Giessel wrote:
> >On 2006/10/27 15:20, Noah seems to have typed:
> >  
> >>this is the best answer.  Hits it right on the head of what I want.  
> >>What if I want the character to replace the ^M with a new line what do I 
> >>enter in the replace field?
> >>    
> >
> >control-q control-j
> >  
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-questions at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"