VIM Control Characters – search and replace

Control characters require an escape sequence prior to using in a search and replace operation in VIM. In Linux, the escape character is Ctl-v. Windows requires a Ctl-q.

Remove all ^M characters from a file on Linux:

%s/^V^M//g

Remove all ESCAPES (\27, ^[) from a file on Windows:

%s/^q^[//g