Hex 0x00 (^@) value between characters

Context

A TXT file opened in Vim shows something like

^@V^@e^@r^@i^@f^@y

while it is supposed to be

Verify

Root Cause

The characters are written in UTF-16 while the file is opened as UTF-8. This is probably because there are other UTF-8 content in the file that leads the text editor to parse the file in UTF-8 format.

Solution

Set the encoding to UTF-16.

In Vim, this can be done by executing

:e ++enc=utf-16

Or

:e ++enc=utf-16le

Reference

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16301705/hex-00-value-between-characters