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Is there a way, built-in or with a plugin, that I can swap any number of two different patterns on an arbitrary range using a regex?
Maybe something :s-style like :{range}exchange/{pattern-1}/{pattern-2}/{flags}?
Example:
foo bar
bar foo bar
hypothetical command swaps foo and bar
bar foo
foo bar foo
This is a duplicate of an old question I cannot found anymore but for which I've a trace (through a solution): https://github.com/LucHermitte/lh-misc/blob/master/plugin/rotate_substitute.vim
:command! -bang -nargs=1 -range CycleSubstitute <line1>,<line2>call s:CycleSubstitute("<bang>", <f-args>)
" no back ref supported; makes no sense
function! s:CycleSubstitute(bang, repl_arg) range
let do_loop = a:bang != "!"
let sep = a:repl_arg[0]
let fields = split(a:repl_arg, sep)
let cleansed_fields = map(copy(fields), 'substitute(v:val, "\\\\[<>]", "", "g")')
" build the action to execute
let action = '\=s:DoCycleSubst('.do_loop.',' . string(cleansed_fields) . ', "^".submatch(0)."$")'
" prepare the :substitute command
let args = [join(fields, '\|'), action ]
let cmd = a:firstline . ',' . a:lastline . 's'
\. sep . join(fields, '\|')
\. sep . action
\. sep . 'g'
" echom cmd
" and run it
exe cmd
endfunction
function! s:DoCycleSubst(do_loop, fields, what)
let idx = (match(a:fields, a:what) + 1) % len(a:fields)
return a:fields[idx]
endfunction
Which could be used with: %CycleSubstitute/foo/bar in your example.
RotateSubstitute, Translate, and Do____ do in that script?
– jrpear
Oct 13 '20 at 4:13
:RotateSubstitute replaces text matching the pattern with the first replacement first, then within the second, then with the third, and so on. :Translate is just like tr(anslate) unix command on range of lines. Your should see the Q/A's they answer in the first links at the top of the file. s:Doxxx are support functions
– Luc Hermitte
Oct 13 '20 at 8:03
Great though it would be, there is no exchange command in Vim and the
usual approach here is to perform A-->B, C-->A, B-->C instead of the direct
but impossible A<-->C. Of course, one needs to guarantee that the intermediate
B value is not present in the file. So use something weird enough for B,
for example, @#%:
:%s/foo/@#%/g|%s/bar/foo/g|%s/@#%/bar/g
If you don't want to take the risk of @#% being present in the file,
adapt this use of Sed
to:
:%!sed 's/foo/\n/g;s/bar/foo/g;s/\n/bar/g'
As described in the linked answer, Sed's pattern space is guaranteed to have no newline characters, so this last command is certain to succeed.
Use capture groups.
:s/\v(pattern1)(.*)(pattern2)/\3\2\1/
You need to capture the text in between to reference it during substitution.
