^M characters in git commit message (git commit -v)

Question

I am having a weird problem where lots of ^M characters show up in my git commit message. Please find a screenshot attached. This is not causing any problems, just makes it annoying to read through.

enter image description here

Tips appreciated.

"git commit message" doesn't correlate to screenshot content, title is misleading — Lazy Badger, Mar 22 '12 at 16:27

score 10 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:13

10

"The Proper Way", if you use Git in cross-platform environment, contrary to Abhijeet's answer, is:

Learn and CORRECTLY configure core.autocrlf settings in each client

Read local topic "Why should I use core.autocrlf=true in Git?" as good starting point

edited May 23 '17 at 12:13

Community

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answered Mar 22 '12 at 16:23

Lazy Badger

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thanks, this worked! I also converted all my files to unix format, seems like the repo I forked from was developed on windows. – Hendrik Mar 24 '12 at 15:17

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 22 '12 at 15:59

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Thats a windows newline. Newlines in and windows & linux are different.

You can remove it using dos2unix.

Various ways of doing it: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-unix-linux-convert-dos-newlines-cr-lf-unix-text-format/

answered Mar 22 '12 at 15:59

shadyabhi

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Not completely true: it is *part* of a windows newline. On windows newline is `CR LF`, on linux it is `LF` and `CR` is shown as `^M`, on mac newline is (was?) a single `CR`. There is no need to use dos2unix or similar, vim can handle this correctly if you set needed value of `'fileencodings'` option or are fine with always writing `e ++ff=dos`. – ZyX Mar 22 '12 at 17:04

Seth Reno · Answer 3 · 2013-09-26T13:23:42.070

I'm on windows and did not want to set autocrlf to true. I worked around the issue by putting the following in my .vimrc

" settings for git commit messages
function GitCommitSettings()
    %s/^M//g               " remove ^M added by git diff
    syntax sync fromstart  " refresh syntax highlight after replace
    1                      " move to line 1
endfunction
au BufNewFile,BufRead COMMIT_EDITMSG call GitCommitSettings()

^M characters in git commit message (git commit -v)

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