Practical Vim, 2nd Edition

Tip 17

Insert Unusual Characters by Character Code

Vim can insert any character by its numeric code. This can be handy for entering symbols that are not found on the keyboard.

We can tell Vim to insert any arbitrary character if we know its numeric code. From Insert mode, we just have to type <C-v>{code}, where {code} is the address of the character that we want to insert.

Vim expects the numeric code to consist of three digits. Suppose, for example, that we wanted to insert an uppercase “A” character. The character code is 65, so we would have to enter it as <C-v>065.

But what if we wanted to insert a character whose numeric code is longer than three digits? For example, the Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane has an address space for up ...