How can I copy from the browser and paste to vim without unicode problems

Question

This happens to me all the time: I copy something from a rich text screen (usually a browser) and then paste it into vim. Usually its a code block and then when I go to compile or run or what have you I get all kind of bazaar errors.

I scratch my head, and then spend half an hour trying to figure out what is wrong before I realize I've copied some non ASCII characters: dashes, left and right quotes, long underscores, multiplication signs in place of x's, etc.

So I ask you: how can I copy non-ASCII into my VIM session without error?

Is there a paste mode that automatically 'down samples' unicode to ASCII? Is there a quick/dirty search for non ASCII characters in a file?

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Update: For those looking for a similar solution, I didn't find a common tool. But I did find this SO question related to the same solution.

If you're a Vim user, you're in luck: I've written a generic function and posted it to github as a plugin called vim-utf2ascii.

Answer 1

Just setup Vim to work with UTF-8:

set termencoding=utf-8
set encoding=utf-8

Also make sure you are copying real code: some famous blog systems like to convert straight quotes into curly quotes and do all kind of typographic horrors to code. To avoid that kind of pitfall, try to copy from the source when possible or look for a "raw" button somewhere.