vi inserting control characters

[Denise Borgen]

How do you insert ^C, ^D, ^E, etc. in a file using the vi editor. I used to know this but I haven't needed it for a few years.

[Scott Palmer_1]

Hello,

try VC...etc

Regards

Scott Palmer

[Denise Borgen]

Ooooh!, That's it, and fast thanks.

[Scott Palmer_1 · Accepted solution]

Think nothing of it

Scott

[A. Clay Stephenson]

The 'trick' is to put vi into edit code (normal 'i') and then enter Cntrl-V, the next character will be quoted.

Thus to enter Cntrl-D,Cntrl-E,ESC you would
1) Position cursor and press 'i'
2) Ctrl-V,D,Ctrl-V,E,Ctrl-V,ESC
3) ESC to end insert

Use od -c to view the file.

[Denise Borgen]

Thanks, problem solved, ( and put in our solutions database correctly this time) And thanks for the od command, that is something I can use.

[Bill Hassell]

When you are dealing with binary files, the mixed hex format is a great help:

xd -xc /somefile