Replace with CR

[Andrea Venturoli]

Hello.

I'm using emacs on several FreeBSD boxes (text or X version).
For several years I've been able to replace any character with a 
newline, by doing (e.g. with ';'):
M-x replace-string(enter);(enter)^Q(enter)(enter)

The line
a;b;c
would become
a
b
c

Now the same procedure does not work anymore as the (enter) immediately 
after ^Q does not move to a newline, but enters ^M.

I.e. what I get is "a^Mb^Mc".


How can I restore the previous behavior, or, failing that, replace 
something with a newline?

I don't know when and why this stopped working.

 bye & Thanks
        av.