How to let vim show BOM as <feff> -

when @ file on 1 of our servers see this:

<feff>sku;qty productsku;1 

when download file , open vi don't see <feff>

when :e ++bin can see <feff> see ^m now

<feff>sku;qty^m productsku;1^m 

but don't want set ^m. want see <feff>. example <80> had in file.

how can set vim show me special chars?

~ edit ~

the command vi --version tells me following:

vim - vi improved 7.0 (2006 may 7, compiled aug  4 2010 07:21:08) 

it says system-vimrc-file /etc/vimrc has following content:

if v:lang =~ "utf8$" || v:lang =~ "utf-8$"    set fileencodings=utf-8,latin1 endif  set term=builtin_ansi set nocompatible    " use vim defaults (much better!) set bs=indent,eol,start     " allow backspacing on in insert mode "set ai         " set autoindenting on "set backup     " keep backup file set viminfo='20,\"50    " read/write .viminfo file, don't store more             " 50 lines of registers set history=50      " keep 50 lines of command line history set ruler       " show cursor position time  " part when compiled support autocommands if has("autocmd")   augroup redhat     " in text files, limit width of text 78 characters     autocmd bufread *.txt set tw=78     " when editing file, jump last cursor position     autocmd bufreadpost *     \ if line("'\"") > 0 && line ("'\"") <= line("$") |     \   exe "normal! g'\"" |     \ endif   augroup end endif  if has("cscope") && filereadable("/usr/bin/cscope")    set csprg=/usr/bin/cscope    set csto=0    set cst    set nocsverb    " add database in current directory    if filereadable("cscope.out")       cs add cscope.out    " else add database pointed environment    elseif $cscope_db != ""        cs add $cscope_db    endif    set csverb endif  " switch syntax highlighting on, when terminal has colors " switch on highlighting last used search pattern. if &t_co > 2 || has("gui_running")   syntax on    set hlsearch endif  if &term=="xterm"      set t_co=8      set t_sb=^[[4%dm      set t_sf=^[[3%dm endif 

i copied , added ~/.vimrc none of these changes want. few things in if cases might have play around these too.

does know if there other files 1 stated in vi --version read when editing file?

:help 'bomb' explains vim's behavior:

when vim reads file , 'fileencodings' starts "ucs-bom", check presence of bom done , 'bomb' set accordingly. unless 'binary' set, removed first line, don't see when editing.

so,

:set fencs-=ucs-bom 

would turn off, encoding detection broken, too! according experiments, explicit encoding setting (via :edit ++enc=ucs2-le) sets 'bomb' , removes <feff> mark. so, avenue leads nowhere.

alternatives

• editing in binary mode, you've found out. wouldn't recommend it, since has drawbacks.
• including indication in statusline. have somewhere else, it's visible, not @ beginning of document. highly recommended right way™ in vim. , easy achieve, too:

set statusline+=\ %{&bomb?'bom':''}