Is there a way to use the substitute command in vi to insert carriage returns? I'm looking at a line of data like this:

DATA1 DATA2 DATA3 DATA4 DATA5 ... so on

I want to break up each DATA entry into separate lines, like so:

DATA1
DATA2
DATA3
DATA4
... so on

I was thinking I could substitute the spaces for carriage returns, but I do not know of a way to insert carriage returns with vi.

Thanks ahead of time,
Carl

:g/DATA/s/ [ ]*/CtrlVCtrlM/g

For all lines containing the string DATA, the above command will change each string of spaces to a newline character. The CtrlVCtrlM are two control characters in a row: Ctrl-V and Ctrl-M

That would include one or more spaces at the end of the line as well. If you do not want trailing spaces to be converted to a newline, first remove them with:

:g/DATA/s/[ ]*$

Thank you Jim! That works like a charm. I did not realize there were special characters like that that could be put into the substitute command.