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I'm trying to view and edit a file in Vim, but this file has ANSI escape codes:

^[[1m[0.05s elapsed, 00:00:13 total]^[[0m

How can I tell Vim to interpret them properly instead of just showing the raw code?

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What does "interpret properly" mean? –  wallyk Nov 17 '11 at 9:30
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2 Answers

It sounds like you want to display ANSI colors and conceal their escape characters. You can do this with Charles Campbell's "AnsiEsc" plugin.

Note that you will need Vim version 7.3 or newer. (Older versions of Vim could be patched, but that's more work for an outdated version of Vim.)

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This works, if the file is in a buffer. However it doesn't work great if you are running a command like rake or cucumber that puts the command output not in a buffer. –  Ivanoats Jan 30 '12 at 5:50
That is correct, but the asker specifically mentioned ANSI within a file opened in Vim. –  Heptite Jan 30 '12 at 6:51
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You can't.

On Unix-like systems, vim uses those same escape sequences to move its cursor around and perform syntax highlighting. Interpreting such sequences in the data would interfere with editing.

Consider, you press arrow down, vim scrolls a new line into the bottom line, that line ends with a clear-screen sequence.

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