Find and replace string with slash in it and retain the slash in the new string

Question

I am having a tough time finding and replacing a string using vi. Source String:

&DB2_PORT;/&DB2_DATA;

New String after replace:

&DB2_PORT;/&DB2_DATA;:tcp=true

I can find &DB2_DATA; and replace it with &DB2_DATA;:tcp=true, but that is not what I need to do.

Can someone please help me understand the appropriate ':s' command in order to achieve this replacement?

Answer 1

This should do what you want:

:%s/&DB2_PORT;\/&DB2_DATA;/\0:tcp=true/

Answer 2

As you state, your string contains / so presumably that is tripping you up since it must be escaped if you use / to delimit the sections of your substitution command. See the other answer here for solution with escaping. But we don't have to use / as our separator. We can use any non-alphanumeric, single-byte character except \, " or |. For example, with #...

:%s#&DB2_PORT;/&DB2_DATA;#&:tcp=true#

Note: In a substitution & is replaced with whatever string was matched by your pattern.