Remove ^H from gvim

Question

I am trying to direct data from manpage to gvim file but it's not properly formatted.

Example:

• In manpage it is shown as NAME (bold)
• But in gvim its printed as N^HNA^HAM^HME^HE.
• Similarly for SYNTAX it prints S^HSY^HYN^HNT^HTA^HAX^HX.
• You can notice additional letter after(or before) ^H.

Please suggest how to correct this.
Also suggest if there is any other way of re-directing, so that it keeps the formatting intact.

Answer 1

I suppose you are trying to capture the output from a program and open it on gVim... If that's the case, I'm afraid you will need to open the file with the output and then remove those ^H and the repeated character that follows it.

%s/\v(.)^H\1/\1/g

Where:

%s/ substitute in all lines:

\v uses very magic mode (see :help /magic)

(.)^H\1 searchs for one character followed by ^H and then by itself again (a^Ha, for example); note that in order to enter ^H you need to press ^V (or ^Q if you were on a Windows machine) and then ^H

/\1/g replace all the occurrences with the first character

PS: A long time ago, in order to print bold characters you would need to print it, than send a backspace and print it again; well, ^H is that backspace character.

Answer 2

Since the OP is dealing directly with manpages, I suggest

:runtime plugin/man.vim

(Which can be put in startup files), followed by

:Man command

Also see help MANPAGER

Answer 3

I got the solution.

man <command> | col -b > <file>

This command dumps the file without ^H and one extra character.
Drawback: bold letters are not bold, but at-least gvim file is now readable.

Answer 4

if you use vim in mac could do following in command enter mode:

Contrl + Q, Control + H

it will generate ^H in line.