Text Editor which shows \r\n?

NickAldwin picture NickAldwin · Sep 18, 2009 · Viewed 176.2k times · Source

I'm looking for a text editor that can show me the actual carriage returns and newlines.

E.g. if I save this string: "This\rIs\r\nA\nString"

Instead of showing

This
Is
A
String

I'm looking for some text editor which will show

This\rIs\r\nA\nString

I believe a problem with my text-file parsing in a certain program is being caused by inconsistent newline/carriage return/both on the ends of lines.

I could just make a program which can read a file and display it with that formatting, but I figured it'd be easier if anyone knew of one that can already do it.

Thanks!

[EDIT]
Forgot to specify I'm on Windows, and installing Cygwin isn't really an option. Otherwise I would use vi or vim.
Also, if there's a way to do this in PSPad, which is already installed, it would be awesome if you knew that too. Thanks!

Answer

Thomas Owens picture Thomas Owens · Sep 18, 2009

With Notepad++, you can show end-of-line characters. It shows CR and LF, instead of "\r" and "\n", but it gets the point across. However, it will still insert the line breaks. But you do get to see the line-ending characters.

To use Notepad++ for this, open the View menu, open the Show Symbols slide out, and select either "Show all characters" or "Show end-of-line characters".

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