Using Vim like notepad

[petrus4]

John,
I'd recommend checking out vis. Try 'man vis.' I don't know whether it is installed on Ubuntu or not by default, but it is on FreeBSD.

Vis is a command line filter program specifically for displaying invisible chars in files, in a visible way.

vis -lt <file>

The above command will print a file to stdout, and will insert special chars for both tabs and newlines, to show you where they are in the file.

[TheStatsMan]

Gvim has exactly what you are asking for. You can simply highlight goto edit -> find and replace