Substituting by \n inserts a null character into the text. To get a newline, use \r. When searching for a newline, you’d still use \n, however. This asymmetry is due to the fact that \n and \rdo slightly different things:
\n matches an end of line (newline), whereas \r matches a carriage return. On the other hand, in substitutions \n inserts a null character whereas \r inserts a newline (more precisely, it’s treated as the input CR). Here’s a small, non-interactive example to illustrate this, using the Vim command line feature (in other words, you can copy and paste the following into a terminal to run it). xxd shows a hexdump of the resulting file.
echo bar > test
(echo 'Before:'; xxd test) > output.txt
vim test '+s/b/\n/' '+s/a/\r/' +wq
(echo 'After:'; xxd test) >> output.txt
more output.txt
Before:
0000000: 6261 720a bar.
After:
0000000: 000a 720a ..r.
In other words, \n has inserted the byte 0x00 into the text; \r has inserted the byte 0x0a.
yy or Y to copy the line (mnemonic: yank)
or
dd to delete the line (Vim copies what you deleted into a clipboard-like "register", like a cut operation)
then
p to paste the copied or deleted text after the current line
or
P to paste the copied or deleted text before the current line
Best Answer
Even shorter than the :search command:
This is what it means: