`E575: viminfo: Illegal starting char in line: ...` on startup

Question

Recently on starting vim I've been getting an error message like this:

E575: viminfo: Illegal starting char in line: wait_until(lambda
_:<80><fc>^B ^[ldWA)^[:w^Mkkkdd^[:w^M<80><fd>c<80><fd>b248Gwwi_zzz^[:w^M<80><fd>c<80><fd>bkkkkj/refresh^M^c^[ma/browser.rfer<80>kb<80>kb<80>kbresh^[/refresh^MnN^ceb<80>kbdrie<80>kbver^[:w^M<80><fd>c<80><fd>b<80><fd>c<80><fd>b<80><fd>c<80><fd>b<80><fd>c<80><fd>b<80><fd>,<80><fd>-<80><fd>.^[^[^[^[<80><fd>W<80><fd>,<80><fd>.<80><fd>c<80><fd>b<80><fd>c<80><fd>b<80><fd>c<80><fd>bjodisplay_remaining_hours=<80>kb = trello9"<80>kb<80>kb("^V^V")^[^wwwwdt/..:w^M/zzz^Mkkjo@display_remaining_staff_hours^[ma/ldispla<80>kb<80>kb^[<80>kb^[ggjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjlkkkllllllllllllllllis<80>kb_staff^[*A.acceptance_test("At<80>kbT1")^[:w^Mjhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhdt(^[:w^M<80><fd>L<80><fd>L<80><fd>L<80><fd>L<80><fd>,<80><fd>.<80><fd>L<80><fd>L<80><fd>c<80><fd>b<80><fd>c<80><fd>b<80><fd>c<80>

It doesn't happen when I launch with vim -u NONE but it does happen if I clear out my entire ~/.vimrc and move my ~/.vim directory. It looks like there's an error in a tags file somewhere but I can't find with one.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Turns out the answer was in the error message all along.. the offending file was ~/.viminfo which was somehow corrupted.

Answer 2

For me, this problem keeps showing up even if I delete the ~/.viminfo file - not right away, but a couple of days later.

I just noticed there's a way to skip using the viminfo file entirely, as detailed here:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/332707/22734

In summary, put the following in your ~/.vimrc

let skip_defaults_vim=1
set viminfo=""

Answer 3

To solve this:

1. rm ~/.viminfo
2. vim ~/.viminfo # new file, leave it blank, then just wq.
3. source terminal et voila

Answer 4

Noticed this error when I had forgot to start the line with : in .viminfo file for example set tabstop=4. To get rid of this error had to add : at the beginning of the line as below.

:set tabstop=4

Answer 5

I had the same issue. I think it occurred after I deleted a repo from my computer.

I first noticed it when trying to do a git merge from terminal, so I originally assumed it was an issue with git.

As describe above it is an issue with the ~/.viminfo file.

I resolved it by opening the ~/.viminfo in a text editor and removing the leading ".

Now everything seems to work fine again.

Answer 6

Removing ~/.viminfo only helped me to solve the problem temporarily. Later the error poped up again.

I finally resolved the problem by adding a > in the ~/.viminfo file.

I opened ~/.viminfo using vim and there was one line in red that showed up to me, so I just fixed that line through adding a >. You should add or delete something in your ~/.viminfo by comparing the wrong line in ~/.viminfo and other right lines.

Answer 7

I'm on Windows, and resolved this by removing the _viminfo file at user home directory (i.e. c:\Users\<username>\_viminfo).

Answer 8

Try this:

1. rm ~/.viminfo
2. touch ~/.viminfo

This solves my problem.

Answer 9

Maybe a viminfo save in default ansi encoding result illegal char, I have add c in viminfo parameters saved the question.

set viminfo=%,<100,'10,/50,:100,h,f0,c,n~/.vim/viminfo

See: https://vimhelp.org/options.txt.html#%27viminfo%27

Answer 10

For me, the problem was caused because I'd done a search-and-replace to replace a string which had been encoded in utf-8 but opened by Vim as encoding=latin1 . The string was saved in C:\Users\me_viminfo under "Command Line History" in these lines:

?
â€/if
|2,1,1681779433,10,"â€/if"

Deleting those lines from _viminfo stopped the error messages. But if I do a search-and-replace like that again, it will reappear.