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I currently have a single file that has nearly 10000 lines of text in it. Each section that I want is broken up like so -
Chapter 1: Chapter 1
TEXT GOES HERE
Chapter 2: Chapter 2
TEXT GOES HERE
Chapter 3: Chapter 3
TEXT GOES HERE
I want to break up each chapter so that I save a file like 01.tex, 02.tex, and 03.tex that contains all of that text for that chapter. Is there a way to regex through the file and make a save for each chapter?
That's a job for :global, with which you can split the file into ranges, here from a line starting with Chapter to the one before the next such line. To correctly handle the last range, insert a dummy line containing EOF at the end first.
To build the filespec, I would usually use :execute, but that doesn't handle ranges. So, I use the more obscure backtick expression (:help `=). Instead of a variable counter, I just grab the first number from the current (first of the range) line:
:global/^Chapter/,/^Chapter\|^EOF/-1write `='path/to/dir' . matchstr(getline('.'), '\d\+') . '.tex'`
This basically searches for all lines starting with Chapter, and then :write the following range: .,/^Chapter\|^EOF/-1 (the . is implicit by the positioning of :global).
%:h instead of path/to/dir?
– PhilippFrank
Mar 18 '15 at 8:34
:h :range. It makes the search for the end start at the position of the first part of the range (with :g, it actually doesn't matter, and , would do, too). Yes, %:h would do; the path/to/dir was just an example, obviously.
– Ingo Karkat
Mar 18 '15 at 8:56
:h :global and :h :range, and I understand roughly what's happening, but I'm still having a bit of trouble parsing precisely the boundary between where the "pattern" for the global ends and where the range for the write begins.
– Rich
Mar 18 '15 at 12:19
