Find number of regex matches per line

Question

Say I do a regex search for a class of characters, e.g.:

/[clsktb]

Is there a way to either sort lines by the number of matched characters, or to show the number of matches next to the line numbers?

Answer 1

Here is a variation:

:%s/^/\=len(split(getline('.'), '[clsktb]\zs')).' '/

That searches for line start, and for each line, gets its content and checks how many matches it has and puts the result back on the line.

Answer 2

If you must (using a Vim linked sausage command):

:sign unplace *
:g/^/ let n = 0 | let c = -1 | while c != 0 | let c = search('[-]', '', line('.')) | let n = n + 1 | endwhile | if n > 1 | exe 'sign define ' . n . ' text=' . (n-1) | exe 'sign place ' . n . ' line=' . line('.') . ' name=' . n . ' file=' . expand('%:p') | endif

Answer 3

Many Vims provide support for some scripting languages (Perl, Ruby, Python). If your vim has Perl support (some distributions don't provide it) you can use :perl perl-command and :perldo perl-command.

:perldo   $_ = y/clsktb// . " :: $_"

Perl's y/// returns the number of occurrences of the chars in the default string ($_). The new $_ is concatenation of that number followed by " :: " and the line.

\thanks{EvergreenTree}