Vim opens Powershell dump files with null characters

Question

In Powershell I run some command-line script and make a dump of it:

PS> cmd /c D:\script.bat | tee ~/out.log

Then, I open this log in vim, and this is roughly what I see:

яю^M^@
^@C^@:^@\^@U^@s^@e^@r^@s^@>^@s^@e^@t^@ ^@D^@E^@B^@U^@G^@_^@F^@U^@L^@F^@I^@L^@L^@M^@E^@N^@T^@=^@-^@X^@r^@u^@n^@j^@d^@w^@p^@:^@t^@r^@a^@n^@s^@p^@o^@r^@t^@=^@d^@t^@_^@s^@o^@c^@k^@e^@t^@,^@a^@d^@d^@r^@e^@s^@s^@=^@3^@0^@0^@4^@,^@s^@e^@r^@v^@e^@r^@=^@y^@,^@s^@u^@s^@p^@e^@n^@d^@=^@n^@ ^@^M^@

And the hex dump:

0000000: d18f d18e 0d00 0a00 4300 3a00 5c00 5500  ........C.:.\.U.
0000010: 7300 6500 7200 7300 3e00 7300 6500 7400  s.e.r.s.>.s.e.t.
0000020: 2000 4400 4500 4200 5500 4700 5f00 4600   .D.E.B.U.G._.F.
0000030: 5500 4c00 4600 4900 4c00 4c00 4d00 4500  U.L.F.I.L.L.M.E.
0000040: 4e00 5400 3d00 2d00 5800 7200 7500 6e00  N.T.=.-.X.r.u.n.
0000050: 6a00 6400 7700 7000 3a00 7400 7200 6100  j.d.w.p.:.t.r.a.
0000060: 6e00 7300 7000 6f00 7200 7400 3d00 6400  n.s.p.o.r.t.=.d.
0000070: 7400 5f00 7300 6f00 6300 6b00 6500 7400  t._.s.o.c.k.e.t.
0000080: 2c00 6100 6400 6400 7200 6500 7300 7300  ,.a.d.d.r.e.s.s.
0000090: 3d00 3300 3000 3000 3400 2c00 7300 6500  =.3.0.0.4.,.s.e.
00000a0: 7200 7600 6500 7200 3d00 7900 2c00 7300  r.v.e.r.=.y.,.s.
00000b0: 7500 7300 7000 6500 6e00 6400 3d00 6e00  u.s.p.e.n.d.=.n.
00000c0: 2000 0d00 0a                              ....

How do I configure vim to open such files normally without a hassle of deleting those nulls every time? P.S. Notepad opens file without nulls visible

Answer 1

It seems that your file is UTF8 encoded.

To open it, start vim with encoding argument like this:

vim "+set encoding=utf-8"

or if you are already editing the file, you can set the encoding as follows:

:set enc=utf-8

Answer 2

Your file is encoded in UTF-16; each character is represented by 2 byte (and the lower end comes first).

As long as 'encoding' is set to something that can represent the characters in the file (utf-8 is recommended, latin1 won't do), this is fine, no need to fiddle with it.

You need to tell Vim the file's encoding. Either explicitly when opening

:edit ++enc=utf-16le out.log

or by prepending (after files with BOM, which can be uniquely identified) the value to 'fileencodings':

:set fileencodings=ucs-bom,utf-16le,utf-8,default,latin1