Yank both sides of equation

Question

While writing in latex I often want to copy a math equation's right hand side or left hand side. For example I have something like this

\begin{gather*}
    5 \cdot \left( A A 3 \right) + 50 \cdot \left( A A 3 \right) = 6CAB \\
    500A + 50A + 15 + 5000A + 500A + 150 = 6000 + 100C + 10A + 5
\end{gather*}

and I'd like to copy the right and left hand side of the n-th last equation I've written and store them each in the l and r register respectively. For example if I were to use this on the 2nd last equation the l register would contain

5 \cdot \left( A A 3 \right) + 50 \cdot \left( A A 3 \right)

and the r register would contain

 6CAB \\

So far I have this regex which represents a line that has an = between text

[^=]*\s\+=\s\+[^;]*

But I have no clue on how to somehow input what it's matching into registers and how to find the n-th last equation either... I was wondering if anyone could help me figure this out and was also wondering if this should be a macro?

Answer 1

This can be done with either regex+substitute or macros

Substitute. This is the same as your regex except the important parts are surrounded by \( . \) to create capture groups. These are referred to by submatch(1) and submatch(2) respectively. We use the replace expression \= and execute('let') idiom. Finally, use /n to prevent substitution from actually happening.

s/\([^=]*\)\s\+=\s\+\([^;]*\)/\=execute('let [@l,@r]=[submatch(1),submatch(2)]')/n 

Macro. Create a macro as follows:

:let @q = '_"lyt=f=l"ry$'

Then type @q to execute the macro on the line. The parts are:

1. _ go to start of line.
2. "lyt= yank until = into register l.
3. f=l go one past the =.
4. "ry$ yank until end.

Command. Alternatively, this is straightforward to do using basic vimscript

:let [@l,@r] = split(getline('.'), '=')