Vi and Vim Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people using the vi and Vim families of text editors. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Both $ and \n represents the end of a line. To remove an empty line we can use either :g/^$/d or :%s/^\n//g
My questions are:
What's the difference between these two signs?
It seems the first command removes a line while the latter one replaces a line by nothing. Hence the first one should be more efficient than the second one. Is my analysis correct?
What about the comparison between :g/^$/d and :g/^\n/d?
To put it briefly, $ (and ^) are null-size, empty markers that, when replaced, actually remove nothing (so you basically append to the line), while \n stands for the character (or characters) separating 2 lines: if you replace \n, you will also join those lines.
That's why if you replace your substitute example with %s/^$//g, nothing happens.
The :g/^$/d works because the pattern is only used to find the line, and d (delete) is the one actually removing the line, EOL included (since it is an Ex command).
