Git commit.template中出现^M特殊字符的去除方法咨询

Hey, I’ve dealt with this annoying ^M issue plenty of times—those are just Windows-style carriage return (CR) characters clashing with Unix/macOS line endings (LF). Here’s how to get rid of them for good:

• First, confirm the problem
  Run this command to see the raw line endings in your commit template (replace the path with your actual template file location):
  cat -A ~/.gitcommit.template
  You’ll see those ^M characters show up as \r at the end of lines, which confirms it’s a line ending mismatch.

• Convert the template file to Unix-style line endings
  Pick one of these quick methods:

  1. Use dos2unix (simplest if available):
     dos2unix ~/.gitcommit.template
     This tool directly converts CRLF to LF in place.
  2. Use sed if you don’t have dos2unix:
     sed -i 's/\r$//' ~/.gitcommit.template
     This command strips out the trailing \r from every line.
  3. Use Vim:
     Open the file with vim ~/.gitcommit.template, then in command mode type :set fileformat=unix and save with :wq. This rewrites the file with Unix line endings.

• Prevent this from happening again
  Set Git to handle line endings automatically so future edits don’t reintroduce the issue:
  git config --global core.autocrlf input
  This tells Git to convert any CRLF line endings to LF when you commit files, while leaving your working directory files as-is (ideal for Unix/macOS). If you’re on Windows, use git config --global core.autocrlf true instead.

The root cause here is that your commit template file was probably created or edited on a Windows system, which uses CRLF (\r\n) line endings, while your current system expects just LF (\n). Converting the file and setting up Git’s line ending handling will make those ^M characters disappear for good.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者Marfaldo