Search entire file for a pattern; every time it's found, delete up until a certain character appears

Question

I'm trying to search for the string /c in the entire file, and when it's found I'd like to delete everything - including the /c itself - up until the next occurrence of / (but not the / itself). For the purposes I'm using this for, you can assume that:

1. not every line will have a /c in it,
2. but when there is one in a line, it will always be the only one in that line, and
3. there will always be a / following it at some point in that same line.

I've learned of macros recently, and I found that if I create a macro with qa/\/c<CR>dt/q and then run it a large number of times with :g//normal 500@a, that it will make all the desired deletions (until it gets to the end of the file when it gives the error E486: Pattern not found: \/c). But I was wondering if there is a simpler way to do it - with some kind of :%s search command - that requires only one line. I'm quite certain there is, I just don't know how to do it. Alternatively, if a command or function could be created in the _vimrc file that would accomplish this task, that would work too.

Answer 1

I think the following command should do what you need:

:g:/c:s:/c[^/]*/:/:

Breaking it up:

• :g: for every line that satisfies the condition
  • that it match /c (note, I'm using : as the regex delimiter for convenience, or I'd have to escape each / that I use)
• run s:/c[^/]*/:/:, which:
  • looks for /c, followed by any number of non-/ characters and then a /, and
  • replaces it with a /. In effect, it leaves one / in place of the matched text, which includes both the boundary /.

Of course, you could have used your macro and run:

:g:/c:normal @a

The trick is to only run on those lines which match your condition.

Answer 2

I'm not sure what is the difficulty:

:%s:/c.*\ze/::

or

:%s:/c.*/:/:

This searches in the whole file for /c followed at some point by / on the same line and:

• either replaces the pattern, excluding the final /, with nothing (1st form)

• or, the whole pattern is replaced by a single / (2nd form)

In order to avoid escaping / I simply used a different substitute separator (:). .* means "any number of unspecified characters, but only in the same line".

If more than one /c.*/ construct per line is possible, simply add g at the end to replace them all.

Note: the above match is greedy (matches until the last / on the line, "swallowing" all others into the pattern). For a non-greedy match, use [^/]* instead of .*. There is also .*\{-}, but it may not work with the 1st solution (before \ze/).