How to move to the next matching string and then hit delete twice in a macro?

Question

I have a rather long chat transcript that I copied out of a window, and when I pasted it into vim, it put two line breaks after every username, and then what the user typing said. I'd like to:

1. Search for the > character
2. Go to the top of the file.
3. Start recording the macro
4. Move to the next match.
5. Press the delete key twice to move to move the text up to the same line as the user's name
6. Finish recording the macro.
7. Run the previously recorded macro for every match in the file.

How would one go about this in VIM?

Answer 1

As steve pointed out, :%s/>\n\n/> / is useful here (although the g flag he used is superfluous.)

I want to mention another command that is applicable here: the "join" command, which is J.

So for a macro you could use:

ggqq/>$EnterJJq999@q

Explanation:

gg                  # Move to start of file
  qq                # Start recording macro into register q
    />$^M           # Search for the ">" character at the end of a line
         JJ         # Join the next two lines onto the current line
           q        # Stop recording macro
            999@q   # Play macro back 999 times.
                    # (It will stop when ">" is no longer found at the end of any line.)

Answer 2

One way of deleting two new lines after every > is as follows

:%s/>\n\n/> /

To explain, this is a global search and replace (:%s) finding > followed by two newline characters (>\n\n) replacing with >.

Or for recording the macro you asked for

1. Search for the > character

/>

2. Go to the top of the file.

gg

3. Start recording the macro

qa

4. Move to the next match.

n

5. Press the delete key twice to move to move the text up to the same line as the user's name

A<del><del><esc>

6. Finish recording the macro.

q

7. Run the previously recorded macro for every match in the file.

@@

This last line would run it once. Could run it a number of times, say 5, with 5@@. To run the macro until the end of the file (from saginaw in comments), you would need to :set nowrapscan (to stop at the end of the file when searching with n), define a as a recursive macro with

qA@aq

then :set wrapscan to return to the default search behaviour.

Answer 3

Macros are good for quick-and-dirty solutions in the moment, but command-line commands are more efficient (though this is only normally noticeable on really large files). One possible method:

:g/>$/j3

From :h :g:

:[range]g[lobal]/{pattern}/[cmd]
        Execute the Ex command [cmd] (default ":p") on the
        lines within [range] where {pattern} matches.

The [cmd] in this case is :j. From :h :j:

:[range]j[oin][!] {count} [flags]
        Join {count} lines, starting with [range] (default:
        current line |cmdline-ranges|).  Same as "J", except
        with [!] the join does not insert or delete any
        spaces.

In order to join the current line with the next two lines, you actually have to use a {count} of 3, as I've put here.