Fixing VIM error "E576: viminfo: Missing '>' in line: ..."

fix-vim-error576.md

I was getting the error E576: viminfo: Missing '>' in line: [file names] about ten times with various file names whenever I opened or saved a buffer in Vim. This happened both in normal vim and with MacVim. This was followed by the line E136: viminfo: Too many errors, skipping rest of file. Other than these obnoxious messages, Vim itself worked fine.

To fix it, I opened ~/.viminfo and deleted everything in the section labeled # History of marks within files (newest to oldest):. I lost all my history of marks within files, but that was acceptable for me since I was starting a new coding session for the day.

So far, I'm not sure how my viminfo got into this state.

Had the same issue.
Your solution fixed it too.
Still not sure the root cause.

Just look for the blank line and delete it, it uses the blank line as a section separator and gets confused while looking for a section title

Great :)

Thanks for the post ,it worked for me .

it is very strange, but it also worked for me

Don't know the root cause, but simply deleting the ~/.viminfo file also helps.

Thanks, worked for me!

Thanks !

I recently faced this issue and deleting the .viminfo file worked for me.

I believe the problem is any line in the section # History of marks within files (newest to oldest): that's not blank and begins with anything other than ">" or a tab. I had a sequence of lines like the ones below, and the "6" was causing this problem - deleting that one line fixed it.

> C:\directory\file.ext
	"	1	0
6
	+	927	9
	+	978	0
	+	965	0

This makes sense since the error is "Missing '>' in line".

Starting from the top of that section, you can search downward for bad lines with the command:

/^[^>TAB] (but type the tab key in place of TAB)

Thanks for creating this page so I could find it.