^M at the end of every line in vim

When I am editing source files using vim and other editors sometimes at the end of the line I get these ^M characters at the end of each line. I think that it has something to do with editing a file in windows and then in linux. How can I remove all of these automatically?

As a command, type

:%s/^M$//

(To get ^M, press ^V ^M, where ^ is CTRL on most keyboards)

One easy way to strip out the DOS line endings is to use the ff option:

:set ff=unix
:wq

Now your file is back to the good-old-Unix-way.

If you want to add the DOS line-endings (to keep a printer happy, or transfer files with Windows friends who don't have nice tools) you can go the opposite direction easily:

:set ff=dos
:wq

You can do this:

:set fileformats=dos

It will hide the ^M's, without touching the file.