How to replace a character with a newline in Emacs

Question

In Emacs, I tried to replace a character say ";" with a new line using replace-string and/or replace-regexp.

Below commands are what I have tried.

M-x replace-string ; \n   (will replace ";" with 2 characters "\n" )

M-x replace-regex ; \n ( get below error from minibuffer )

Invalid use of `\' in replacement text.

Is there anything wrong using replace-string. Or if there is any other way to do that? Thanks.

Answer 1

M-x replace-string ; C-q C-j

C-q for quoted-insert

C-j is a newline.

Cheers!

Answer 2

Don't forget that you can always cut and paste into the minibuffer.

So you can just copy a newline character (or any string) from your buffer, then yank it when prompted for the replacement text.