Use *-like command in normal mode to execute a find/replace

Question

Background

It's nice to be able to type * in normal mode and automatically have Vim search for the word under the cursor.

Question

Is there an analogous command for executing a find/replace?

E.g. the cursor is on "the" and the result is :%s/\<the\>/ so that I can easily type the only/g for the full find/replace command :%s/\<the\>/the only/g.

Update/clarification

I have learned from a comment on this question that a solution might involve, to quote that comment,

<C-r><C-w> and <C-r><C-a> on the : command-line to insert the word (respectively the WORD) under the cursor.

This certainly works and could be used to write a custom command to do what I am asking (e.g., nnoremap ** :%s/<c-r><c-w>).

Is that the best way to do this? Or is there a native Vim command that already does what I am looking for?

Answer 1

You could do the replace in two steps:

1. You prepare a search command using * (/\<the\>)
2. You do your replace with an empty search (:%s//the only/g)

The replace will default the search to the last one.

It has the advantage over the CtrlrCtrlw trick that the word boundary are included in the search.

This way you can test your search before you use it for doing the replacement which I like.

Answer 2

One nice version of this is *cgn replacementEsc. This is repeatable with ., or n. to see what will change before changing it (kind of like /gc flags for :substitute). If you wanted to do a global replacement for sure, the tricks with :%substitute/<C-r><C-w>/…/… are better, but you could also use the cgn command with (e.g.) 9999..