How do I create a macro (q<letter>) which goes to the end of a line and deletes one or two characters?

Question

I'm refactoring the logger code in my software.

The old log message ends with either ); or just ; at the end of a line and I want to remove those characters and add a new line with some additional data. Here are a few examples showing the endings:

SNAP_LOG_INFO("Some message");
SNAP_LOG_INFO("Some message ")(variable);
SNAP_LOG_INFO("Some message ")(func());
SNAP_LOG_INFO() << "Some message";

// Here is a special case, but I'm not trying to solve it because it's really rare
SNAP_LOG_INFO() << func();

I built my macro like this:

qs$xxi\n<< SNAP_LOG_SEND;\^[q

(where \n is the Enter key and \^[ is the escape key)

That works great when the line ends with ");" but it deletes one too many characters when the old version ends with just ";".

How can I update my macro to make it work in both cases?

Answer 1

Another approach is to use :substitute, having:

SNAP_LOG_INFO("Some message");
SNAP_LOG_INFO("Some message ")(variable);
SNAP_LOG_INFO("Some message ")(func());
SNAP_LOG_INFO() << "Some message";

// Here is a special case, but I'm not trying to solve it because it's really rare
SNAP_LOG_INFO() << func();

You can use :%s/\((\@<!)\)\?;/^M<< SNAP_LOG_SEND to convert it to (Note, ^M is a literal CTRL-V CTRL-M):

SNAP_LOG_INFO("Some message"
<< SNAP_LOG_SEND
SNAP_LOG_INFO("Some message ")(variable
<< SNAP_LOG_SEND
SNAP_LOG_INFO("Some message ")(func()
<< SNAP_LOG_SEND
SNAP_LOG_INFO() << "Some message"
<< SNAP_LOG_SEND

// Here is a special case, but I'm not trying to solve it because it's really rare
SNAP_LOG_INFO() << func()
<< SNAP_LOG_SEND

If that is what you want.

Answer 2

The problem is to find where to go to the end of the line. For that we can actually use a search, but in a macro it replaces the current search. So you have to restore your current search as well if you use such.

The final macro looks like this:

qs/)\?;$\nC\n<< SNAP_LOG_SEND;\^[k/SNAP_LOG\nq
^ ^  ^    ^                   ^  ^^          ^
| |  |    |                   |  ||          +-- stop macro creation
| |  |    |                   |  |+-- restore my search
| |  |    |                   |  +-- go up one line
| |  |    |                   +-- ESCape to stop editing
| |  |    +-- delete end of line & start editing
| |  +-- make the parenthesis option in this search
| +-- search a search inside the macro
+-- start macro 's'

I use the k and do a search on my text so I can stay on the new line I just created. That way I can see if it worked. Otherwise it would go to my next instance which could be many pages below hiding the changes that just happened.