How to view UTF-8 Unicode characters in VIM
If your current locale is in an utf-8 encoding, Vim will automatically start in utf-8 mode.
If you are using another locale, set below in your user ~/.vimrc
file:
set encoding=utf-8
You might also want to select the font used for the menus. Unfortunately this doesn't always work.
Also you have this option to force encoding with :set fileencodings=utf-8
. You can find the documentation here
another solution is: In insert mode, press Ctrl-R ="\xe2\x82\xa9"
Enter in order to directly input UTF-8 characters using thier Hex Encoding.
the \xe2\x82\xa9
is Hex Encoding of ₩
(the currency symbol for North Korea) character.
ref: Vim documentation
Note: If you did the above configuration but still you were not able to see Unicode characters well or type, check in your Terminal or Console configuration if Character encoding
was set to UTF-8
.
Read also Special characters in Vim.
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Vivek Pradhan
Hey there, I work for a business advisory consulting firm and code mostly as a hobby. Lately, I have been deeply enthralled by javascript and like to read up and learn it whenever. I am also particularly interested in home automation and the whole Internet of things landscape leveraging open source technologies. Github Hobbies - Like to cube and watch cat videos on youtube.
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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Vivek Pradhan about 1 year
I am using VIM 7.4 on an Ubuntu 14.04 64 bit machine. In my .vimrc file, I have the following lines:
" Use UTF-8 without BOM set encoding=utf-8 nobomb
The
config
file basically uses Unicode character to display white spaces like tabs, new lines, etc. The complete .vimrc file is taken from Paul Irish's dotfiles.On an earlier install of 14.04 as well as in previous distributions, I was able to see the unicode characters without any problems but not with this one.
I also tried:
set fileencodngs=utf-8
But, the above setting has no effect and I still see garbled characters on the screen. Is there any way around this?
-
Michael Miller over 9 yearsCan you give a link to an example file that looks garbled to you? And can you include a screenshot of what you are seeing in vim? What is the value of the
fenc
variable after opening a file?
-
-
Zelphir Kaltstahl about 7 yearsThis also solved the issue of not being able to input Chinese characters for me.
-
user1717828 over 3 yearsCould someone expand on what
C-R ="\xe2\x82\xa9" <enter>
does? -
αғsнιη over 3 years@ussr1717828 that's the UTF-8 encoding form of
₩
(the currency symbol for North Korea) and that allow user directly to type literal₩
by using its UTF-8 Hex coding withCtrl+R="..."
- Enter.