title: How can I copy from the browser and paste to vim without unicode problems
body: <p>This happens to me all the time: I copy something from a rich text screen (usually a browser) and then paste it into vim. Usually its a code block and then when I go to compile or run or what have you I get all kind of bazaar errors.</p>
  
  <p>I scratch my head, and then spend half an hour trying to figure out what is wrong before I realize I've copied some non ASCII characters: dashes, left and right quotes, long underscores, multiplication signs in place of x's, etc.</p>
  
  <p>So I ask you: how can I copy non-ASCII into my VIM session without error?</p>
  
  <p>Is there a paste mode that automatically 'down samples' unicode to ASCII? Is there a quick/dirty search for non ASCII characters in a file?</p>
  
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  <p><strong>Update</strong>: For those looking for a similar solution, I didn't find a common tool. But I did find <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/334850/c-sharp-how-to-replace-microsofts-smart-quotes-with-straight-quotation-marks">this SO question related to the same solution</a>.</p>
  
  <p>If you're a Vim user, you're in luck: I've written a generic function and posted it to github as a plugin called <a href="https://github.com/dsummersl/vim-utf2ascii" rel="nofollow noreferrer">vim-utf2ascii</a>.</p>