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I have hlsearch set, but it sometimes lulls me into thinking t
hat I have the search term visually selected, and can just hit c to change it.
The term searched for may not be an easy number of letters, words, even lines - and anyway, I don't want to count.
Is there a way to vh (or ch), say, where h runs until the current highlighting stops?
You can use the gn motion for that, it selects the next searched element.
You can use it like so:
/foo<CR>
gn -> select the next "foo"
sbar<Esc> -> (optional) substitute it with "bar"
Bonus: To have . repeat the search and the change, use a c to do everything in one command:
/foo<CR>
cgnbar<Esc>
... -> find and change the 3 next foo
. will repeat the entire action, and can't make it work - read more carefully - c first! Couldn't ask for better.)
n to get to the next search result?
Apr 6, 2016 at 14:42
n. (next occurence, repeat the modification), you can just press . (repeat the modification, which is "change the next occurence")
. invokes gn, the original foo has disappeared, so Vim searches for the next foo. So gn does what n would have done anyway (and more). But, as with n, note that this only works well when bar does not contain foo!
Sep 20, 2016 at 8:10