docs:vim:fileformats [hartungdesign.net wiki]

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====== fileformats ======
  * http://www.vi-improved.org/wiki/index.php/FileFormat

===== Fixing Detection Problems =====
If your file has consistent line endings throughout, but you have had a 'ff' detection problem, the best fix is to force Vim to use the correct format with the :e command:
<code>
:e ++ff=mac
</code>

If your file **does not** have consistent line endings throughout, you need to force vim to load it a certain way without any assumptions.  This example is where the output from a grep command was run and captured to a file.  Some of the results were from dos files, and others from unix files, so the line endings aren't consistent, and vim shows us ^M characters because it is interpreted as unix.
<code>
:set ffs=dos
:e ++ff=dos
</code>
In this case you should see vim list [CR missing] in the status line after loading the file.  Vim has fixed the line endings for you, so now you can simply do this to save the file and open it as a corrected dos file:
<code>
:w
:e!
</code>

===== conversion =====
This will read a file (assuming "dos"), convert line-endings to unix (<CR><NL> pairs will be <NL>):
<code>
:e file
:set fileformat=unix
:w
</code>