Automate Enumeration in vi

Question

Note, this question is about vi, not vim or any other clone. I work on AIX (IBMs UNIX) and the (to my knowledge standard-conforming) vi editor.

Quite often I need to enumerate a list of values, like this:

typeset bar[1]="foo-1"
typeset bar[2]="foo-2"
typeset bar[3]="foo-3"
...

Up to now the only way to accomplish this that I know of is to manually change the number-parts in every line after copying the original line n times.

Is there a way to automate this process?

Note: I have searched and looked at How to insert repetitive text with minor difference in vim? but the suggested solution only works in vim and also involves writing the list of what in my case are enumerations down first manually. This is exactly what I would like to avoid. Lists of arbitrary texts (like in the linked case) cannot be guessed from one another, but (ranges of) numbers can: on "1" follows "2", "3" and so on.

PS: my OS version and the version information of my vi is:

# oslevel -s
7200-05-06-2320

# lslpp -l bos.rte.edit
  Fileset                      Level  State      Description
  -----------------------------------------------------------
  Path: /usr/lib/objrepos
     bos.rte.edit             7.2.5.200  COMMITTED  Editors
   
  Path: /etc/objrepos
     bos.rte.edit             7.2.5.200  COMMITTED  Editors


# what /usr/bin/vi
/usr/bin/vi:
        98 1.20.3.5 src/bos/usr/ccs/lib/libc/POWER/longjmp.s, libcsys, bos720 6/27/13 13:24:34
        61      1.16  src/bos/usr/ccs/lib/libc/__threads_init.c, libcthrd, bos720 8/2/07 13:09:21
        88  1.24  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_put.c, cmdedit, bos720 4/10/06 07:47:54
        50  1.13  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_data.c, cmdedit, bos720 1/21/06 03:54:52
        09  1.11  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/printf.c, cmdedit, bos720 8/7/00 10:14:15
        69      1.17  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_get.c, cmdedit, bos720 3/21/05 23:25:35
        76  1.17.1.6  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_v.c, cmdedit, bos720 3/11/08 01:28:00
        38  1.34.2.2  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_tty.c, cmdedit, bos720 3/31/04 07:01:03
        40  1.28  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_cmdsub.c, cmdedit, bos720 1/10/07 04:44:31
        27  1.29.1.3  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_temp.c, cmdedit, bos72Q, q2018_46A8 10/25/18 02:17:34
        97  1.25  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_vget.c, cmdedit, bos720 3/24/06 05:30:01
        01      1.24  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_vops.c, cmdedit, bos720 8/29/08 00:51:01
        03      1.16  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_vops3.c, cmdedit, bos720 3/22/05 00:02:42
        00  1.15.1.4  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_voper.c, cmdedit, bos720 3/22/05 01:39:20
        99      1.15  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_addr.c, cmdedit, bos720 10/21/05 06:32:51
        98  1.26  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_re.c, cmdedit, bos720 6/12/06 02:37:59
         Version 3.10
        18  1.35.1.4  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_cmds.c, cmdedit, bos72V, v2019_46A1 10/25/19 05:52:42
        80      1.27.11.1  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_io.c, cmdedit, bos720 9/13/13 01:48:13
        68  1.15  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_unix.c, cmdedit, bos720 6/12/06 02:43:44
        09  1.13  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_set.c, cmdedit, bos720 1/21/06 03:54:54
        99      1.33.1.9  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_vmain.c, cmdedit, bos720 7/3/08 03:31:08
        02 1.28  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_vops2.c, cmdedit, bos720 8/7/08 00:01:05
        05  1.21  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_vput.c, cmdedit, bos720 3/21/05 23:17:43
        84  1.13  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_vadj.c, cmdedit, bos720 3/21/05 23:36:28
        06  1.13  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_vwind.c, cmdedit, bos720 3/21/95 17:33:51
        29  1.20.1.3  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_cmds2.c, cmdedit, bos720 8/2/07 07:28:08
        19  1.33  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex_subr.c, cmdedit, bos720 3/21/05 21:50:05
        67      1.11.1.44  src/bos/usr/bin/ex/ex.c, cmdedit, bos720 9/3/09 04:27:29

Answer 1

Vi didn't have Vim's <C-a> or g<C-a> or \= or expressions or any kind of scripting, etc. so all the slick Vim methods are basically irrelevant. The "Improved" in "Vi Improved" is not a joke, it really is.

But vi had :read… and you have a shell.

The following may or may not work out of the box with your particular shell but it is, IMO, the smartest way to do it in vi:

:r !for n in {1..10}; do echo "typeset bar["$n"]=\"foo-"$n"\""; done

or, with $ man seq:

:r !for n in $(seq 10); do echo "typeset bar["$n"]=\"foo-"$n"\""; done

---

FWIW, looping is not necessary if the incremented number is only present once in each desired line, which makes the syntax a lot more concise:

:r !echo "foo-"{1..10}"-bar"

But, with the number present more than once, keeping up with the syntax above:

:r !echo "foo-"{1..10}"-bar-"{1..10}"-baz"

would result in 10×10 lines, which is not really the desired outcome. Hence the loop.