vi editor ^v^m lost special meaning

[uuuuserrrr]

I am looking for something that doesnt lose its special function when writing a script. I am trying to use vi editor to change many files and cannot find any solution.

:g/G53G28G49Z-\.25/s//G90G53G49Z0%0d G91G28Z0/g
or
:g/G53G28G49Z-\.25/s//G90G53G49Z0^v^m G91G28Z0/g

I have tried these without success, as you can see I am trying to get a ctrl-v ctrl-m . these both work when typed into vi , but when passed from elsewhere or even cut and pasted it loses its original function.

any ideas, or another solution ?

[Cheesemill]

What exactly are you trying to achieve by using vi?

You can use the sed or awk commands to achieve everything that I can think of that you would use vi for.

[uuuuserrrr]

I am just more familiar with vi. I was assuming that I may have the same issue with those tho. what would the command for those look like?

[Cheesemill]

I am just more familiar with vi. I was assuming that I may have the same issue with those tho. what would the command for those look like?

Again, that depends.

What exactly are you trying to achieve using vi?

[uuuuserrrr]

I am trying to replace a string of characters with another string of characters and another line of characters on about 500 files.

[Cheesemill]

Vi isn't meant to be used in scripts, only interactively. The preferred method in this situation would be to use sed.

To do a find and replace with sed you would use:

sed -i 's/searchterm/replacement/g' filename.txt

This will replace all occurrences of searchterm with replacement in the file filename.txt

You can add the find command to do this over multiple files at the same time, for example to do a find and replace in every file in a directory you could do:

find /home/user/directory -type f -exec sed -i 's/searchterm/replacement/g' {} \;

[smss]

Are you wanna to find a string? I known your mean as well?
Try with this command in terminal :

 grep -i "string" files.*

[uuuuserrrr]

thanks
i will try tomorrow, maybe the ctrl functions wont be lost there

[steeldriver]

If you're trying to replace DOS-style line terminations then in 'sed' it's probably less ambiguous to use the escape character \r rather than using the Ctrl-v Ctrl-m control sequence (since ^M could be read as an anchored literal M)

$ sed -i 's/\r$//'

[uuuuserrrr]

i cannot try that right now, as i am not near a computer now, but i will try further to clairify what i am trying to do.

i need to replace a string and add a additional line after.

example
original: fo fo fo [search string]

desired: fo fo fo [replace string]
[additional line of replace string]

my issue is that the ^v^m is coming over literaly when using it, other than in the command line