vim - search <br>and replace by a line break character

[Onix]

Hi, I have an HTML document that needs to replace all of its "<br>"
tags to a normal line break. But my command of :%s/<br>/\n/g seems not
useful at all. How can I do this? thanks.

[Bob Stearns]

Post by Onix
Hi, I have an HTML document that needs to replace all of its "<br>"
tags to a normal line break. But my command of :%s/<br>/\n/g seems not
useful at all. How can I do this? thanks.

If you want a real line break, use <ctrl-v><ctrl-m>. Under windows,
<ctrl-q><ctrl-m>, not \n.

[Gary Johnson]

Post by Onix
Hi, I have an HTML document that needs to replace all of its "<br>"
tags to a normal line break. But my command of :%s/<br>/\n/g seems not
useful at all. How can I do this? thanks.

Vim uses '\n' for a newline in patterns, but '\r' for a newline in
replacement strings. So changing your command to

:%s/<br>/\r/g

should do the trick. See

:help sub-replace-special

Gary

[quarkLore]

One can also use sed

sed 's/<br>/\n/g' file.html > outputfile.html

vi can have macros which are a better options for using an editor