How to repeat the last : command for a visual selection instead of whole buffer?

Question

Say I've executed the command:

:g/^.\{1,50\}$/m$

to move all lines with 50 or less characters to the bottom of the file.

Then I realise I actually didn't want to do that for the whole file, but for example a paragraph (or for any visually selected lines). I then do u and vip to select the paragraph I want the g command to affect, I press :, and try to press <UP> to get the previous command, problem is that there are only commands I've done when I've been in visual mode.

How should I do this, so that I don't have to type the whole g command again for the visual selection?

Answer 1

My preferred solution is

1. Select your paragraph vip
2. Hit : and then <C-f> OR press q:
3. Move up to your :g command and do I'<,'>, then Esc, then <CR>.

As mentioned in the comments, it might be handy to map this:

xnoremap <Leader>. q:<UP>I'<,'><Esc>$

Answer 2

first of all, you can't do it in general for any visual selection, since the ex commands operate on lines, so only for the whole lines which are fully or partially visually selected you can run such a command. E.g. you have a line 'Hello world' with the 'or' selected, but you can't operate on the selection, which is 'or', only on the whole line 'Hello world'

Use the automatically placed marks '< for the first line of the visual selection, and '> for the last one. The marks can be set with no visible selection (for example, if you escaped the select mode), and the command below will still work, but you can always press gv in the normal mode, to restore the last selection.

So the command would be

:'<,'> g/^.\{1,50\}$/m$

With the requirement to use the last command without retyping, one can use the normal ex command and the @: command from the normal mode:

:'<,'> normal @:

But I personally don't find this convenient, it seems to be quicker to invoke the command history window, find you command (if it was so long to type) edit it quickly with the '<,'> marks and run it

Answer 3

You can edit the last command to include \%V in the beginning of the pattern g/\%Vpattern/cmd and it will search the last visual selection.