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Running execute g:xx doesn't work.

let g:str="move to right win\t<C-w>h"
let g:temp=escape(matchstr(g:str,'\(\t\)\@<=.*$'),'<')
let g:xx= "normal ".g:temp

execute g:xx

Can anyone explain why?

4
  • 2
    It's not clear what your question is. What are you expecting it to do?
    – Herb
    Jan 11, 2017 at 4:37
  • hi Herb Wolfe,first there is a mistake above:Move to left. As picture show above,two of three situations work fine(execute command),but execute g:xx is not work
    – tracyone
    Jan 11, 2017 at 4:59
  • Can you post the actual file, and not just a screen shot? It's difficult to tell if that's the entire file, and it's easier to copy and paste text for testing.
    – Herb
    Jan 11, 2017 at 5:03
  • sorry,i have posted the test code.
    – tracyone
    Jan 11, 2017 at 5:07

2 Answers 2

1
let g:temp=eval('"'. g:temp .'"')

after

let g:temp=escape(matchstr(g:str,'\(\t\)\@<=.*$'),'<')

Extracting this into a :function:

function! Literalize(string)
    " get already properly escaped sequences out of the way, so we don't double-escape them
    let s = eval('"'. a:string .'"')
    " escape remaining special key sequences
    let s = escape(s, '<')
    let s = eval('"'.   s      .'"')
    return s
endfunction

Explanation

The problem was that escape() handles its input° and output strings as a literal-string (as in single quotes ''). So escaping the < in "<C-w>" results in '\<C-w>', not the desired "\<C-w>"/'^W'.

° If the input is given as a double quoted "string", its escape sequences are evaluated by the vimscript parser, before it is passed to escape().

1
-1

In your first line, the <C-w> is not escaped, so it appears to be matched as a literal string, and the escape function doesn't convert it to the ^W character.

So to get what you want, the first line should actually read

let g:str="move to right win\t\<C-w>h"

In addition, according to the documentation here at sourceforge, the escape command doesn't work how you appear to think. It's going to escape just the '<' character, which does nothing.

3
  • Is there a vim function can translate this keycode,I mean <c-w> to ^w.
    – tracyone
    Jan 11, 2017 at 6:11
  • Sorry, no idea.
    – Herb
    Jan 11, 2017 at 6:20
  • Yes, eval() can do that 'with a little help' – see my answer. Jan 11, 2017 at 10:35

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