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Is there a way to do a search and replace where it searches for if a line contains 4 pipes ( | ) anywhere in the line it will delete it?
I'm working with a big csv file and some lines have 4 pipes and some have 3 pipes. I want to separate out all the ones with 4 pipes in them into a separate file.
A regex-free one-liner which I like better than my previous answer.
:g/|/if count(getline('.'),'|')==4 | delete
On any line matching at least one pipe, then delete lines with exactly 4 pipes.
I recommend using:
:g/regex/d
There might be better regexes, but this one works.
:g/^[^|]*\(|[^|]*\)\{4}$/d
" ^ - start of line
" [^|]* - non pipe characters
" \(|[^|]*\)\{4} - pipe followed by non-pipes exactly 4x
" $ - end of line
If the file is very big, Vim might take too long to do this. To speed it up, add space and underscore after the command to delete each match to the black hole register.
:g/regex/d _