Questions tagged [substitute]
Any operation involving regular expression based substitution of text, such as the ex-mode `:s` command. Not to be confused with the [replace] tag.
40
questions
28
votes
1
answer
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views
How to edit files non-interactively (e.g. in pipeline)?
I would like to edit files passed in pipeline input using vim in non-interactive way or edit files in-place (similar to sed).
Few examples using sed:
$ sed -i'.bak' s/foo/test/g file # Edit file ...
- 18.1k
16
votes
5
answers
3k
views
How to run a substitute command on only a certain part of the line
I have the following line in my code:
INCORRECT_EMAIL_MOBILE_COMBINATION("incorrect_email_mobile_combination");
When I try to substitute the underscores with spaces in visual mode (using :'<,'>...
- 407
18
votes
1
answer
2k
views
What does it mean to replace slashes (/) by exclamation marks (!) in a substitute command?
I recently saw a substitute command where the author had the / replaced by a ! like this: :s!abc!ABC!g
I tried to find some documentation on this usage but I couldn't find anything relevant. So I ...
- 49.3k
19
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Replace a string without changing case?
Due to a quirk in the domain-specific language I am working with, I frequently face the task of (selectively, not globally) replacing term or TERM with word or WORD, respectively.
This means, I ...
- 789
47
votes
5
answers
21k
views
How to replace only within visual selection?
How does one get vim to replace a character within the visual selection only and not elsewhere on the line? Example:
Line: int arr[] = { 00 01 02 03 04 05 05 /* ... lots more like this*/};
Visual ...
- 1,083
22
votes
5
answers
20k
views
How to replace each match with incrementing counter?
I want to search and replace each occurrence of a certain pattern with a decimal number which begins at 1 and increments by one for each match.
I can find similarly worded questions that turn out not ...
- 703
18
votes
4
answers
2k
views
What is the rationale for \r and \n meaning different things in s command?
We all know that, when searching, \n is newline and \r is carriage return (^M), but when replacing \r is newline while \n is a null byte (^@).
What is the origin of this asymmetry? Given that this ...
- 283
1
vote
1
answer
1k
views
How do I break a line with :substitute?
I usually have to worry about escaping search parameters to get special characters to match literally, but this time I'm seeing a problem with my replacement string.
I want to take text like this:
@@...
- 286
76
votes
12
answers
23k
views
How to find and replace in Vim without having to type the original word?
I'd like to optimize my "find and replace" workflow in Vim. It's something I do often, as I'm sure most of you do too. Usually something along the lines of -- copy a block and change the name of a ...
- 833
2
votes
1
answer
762
views
How to remove inner content of html tag conditionally?
I've html file (e.g. curl -o page.html http://example.com/) where I would like to remove inner html block for given html tag.
I've the following code which works:
$ ex -V1 page.html <<-EOF
/&...
- 18.1k
2
votes
1
answer
328
views
How to match pattern with buffer-scoped variable
Goal: write code to do block commenting/uncommenting while keeping the current indentation level. This has been solved, see here for my code
Current problem: use s/// to match a line that begins with ...
- 387
23
votes
1
answer
262
views
How does :g/^$/,/./-j (reduce multiple blank lines to a single blank) work in Vim?
In the article, Vim Regular Expressions, Oleg Raisky gives the following command to reduce multiple blank lines to a single blank:
:g/^$/,/./-j
Can someone please describe how this works?
I know :...
user579
16
votes
3
answers
458
views
Can I make :s operate only on the last match of the line?
:s/pattern/replacement operates on the first match and
:s/pattern/replacement/g on all.
How to operate only on the last one?
- 3,119
15
votes
2
answers
511
views
How can I run :substitute on only part of the line and not all of it?
I have a line like this one:
function my_function(argument, another argument, but there are spaces)
I want to substitute the space characters (inside the argument's names) with underscore. I thus ...
- 1,749
15
votes
6
answers
5k
views
Delete all consecutive duplicates
I have a file that looks like this.
Move to 230.00
Hold
Hold
Hold
Hold
Hold
Hold
Move to 00.00
Hold
Hold
Hold
Hold
Hold
FooBar
Hold
Spam
Hold
I would like it to look like this:
Move to 230.00
...
- 17.4k
6
votes
3
answers
4k
views
Multiple search-replace operations on a selection
I have a LaTeX file with a bunch of commands of the form \label{<word>} where the <word> represents a string that contains special characters, namely á é í ó ú ý ð þ æ ö. I'm looking for a ...
- 217
5
votes
1
answer
950
views
Search and replace, but ignore text in quotes
As a poor-mans refactoring, I'd like to do a search and replace, but omit strings that are in double quotes (C/C++ quoting rules). For example
cout << "Some variable " << variable <<...
- 151
5
votes
1
answer
616
views
Count lines matching a pattern
I'm trying to obtain the number of lines matching a pattern, from a function. I would like the cursor not to be moved at all during the process.
In this case, non-empty and non-comment lines.
Here's ...
- 2,699
5
votes
1
answer
163
views
Can I replace two distinct old strings with two distinct new strings using a single :s command?
Suppose I have the following line of text in vim:
hello, it will be sunny today
and I want to change it to:
goodbye, it will be sunny tomorrow
I could put my cursor on the line and type :s/hello/...
- 53
29
votes
5
answers
14k
views
Can I do an interactive :substitute (search & replace)?
Sometimes I use :s with a complicated regexp which may or may not be correct, or I'm not sure if I want to replace all matches.
Is there any way I can tell Vim to confirm every match it finds before ...
- 61.3k
18
votes
3
answers
12k
views
Substitute with pure vimscript (without `:s`)
I have the following in my vimrc:
func! AddSpaceBeforeEqual()
s/\([a-z)_0-9"'\[\]]\)=/\1 =/ge
endfunc
I'm using vint to lint my vimrc, and got the following warning :
...
- 1,172
15
votes
11
answers
16k
views
Substitute second occurence on line
I have a list of files:
./a.temp.txt ./a.temp.txt
./a/b.temp.txt ./a/b.temp.txt
./a/b/c.temp.txt ./a/b/c.temp.txt
And I want to remove the temp. on each line, but only the second occurence, ...
- 15.9k
10
votes
3
answers
7k
views
What is the best way to re-factor a variable name in vim?
I know there is one way to search and replace variable occurrences across a source file.
But is there any better way by which if I rename a variable at one place it gets renamed at other places as ...
- 1,679
10
votes
1
answer
3k
views
How to translate Unicode escape sequences to the Unicode character?
I have a file with a lot of characters represented like this: \u05E2. (These are the actual characters in the file: backslash, lowercase u, and four hexadecimal digits.) Due to that, the file is ...
- 2,419
8
votes
1
answer
22k
views
Find and replace all numbers with 0?
Is there a command to find and replace all instances of a number in a file with 0 (including decimal numbers like 1.7)?
- 391
7
votes
2
answers
524
views
What is the most efficient way to invert two words?
Let's say that I have a file containing several occurrences of the word foo and several
occurrences of the word bar.
I need to make all the words foo become bar and inversely all the words
bar become ...
- 49.3k
6
votes
3
answers
3k
views
How do I add text before and after the visual selection?
Suppose I’ve selected some text in visual mode. How do I insert a certain piece of text at the beginning of the selection and a different piece of text at the end?
(I’m only concerned with “normal” ...
- 2,923
6
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Using visual selection or register for search and replace
Is there a way to use a register or visual selection for search and replace?
I have some longer sequence of words that are used repeatedly in my script. I want to replace them all but want to avoid ...
- 61
6
votes
5
answers
6k
views
Match any number of digits NOT followed by
I want to search for:
From start of the line, any number of white spaces followed by any
number of digits NOT followed by a dot.
And replace it with all that was searched and a dot. This is just ...
- 265
5
votes
2
answers
478
views
Substitution with math goes wrong
I have a large xhtml document that is broken into some 245 long paragraphs, each with a unique id in the form of "ud###"
<p class="windowbg" id="ud000">
<!--- lots of content --->
</...
- 53
4
votes
1
answer
402
views
Insert subsequent numbers in a substitution pattern
I want to insert subsequent numbers whenever there a regex matches.
I do this in terminal using for command and either perl or sed.
Is there a way to do this in vim?
Basically I want this:
This ...
- 243
4
votes
2
answers
277
views
How do I remove lines where its content already occured in the previous line?
For example I've the following text:
This is my first line, but longer.
This is my first line
This is my second line, but longer.
This is my second line
This is my third line, but longer.
This is my ...
- 18.1k
4
votes
1
answer
657
views
Substitute all except the last asterisk in groups of two or more asterisks
How can I substitute all except the last asterisk in groups of two or more asterisks with two spaces? E.g.
* Micro topic 1
** Microbes are small
** You can't see them!
*** Isn't that something?
...
- 73
4
votes
1
answer
2k
views
How to substitute the first occurrence across the whole file?
I've file in which there are some repeated parts and I want to get rid of the first occurrence. Normally I'd do %s/_exclude// to perform substitute for all lines, however I want to replace only the ...
- 18.1k
4
votes
3
answers
6k
views
How to truncate every line after pattern
I just don't undstand the VIM help for pattern matching and substitution. I've tried.
I have many lines of code, like so:
G1 X139.164 Y115.348 E8.40357 ; perimeter
G1 X138.903 Y115.845 E8.57778 ; ...
- 176
3
votes
2
answers
83
views
Why \%V is not added in visual mode during substitution by default?
\%V can be used to restrict match within the visual selection. However, I can't think of a situation when one would not want to do just that in visual mode.
- 440
3
votes
1
answer
794
views
How to escape pipe (|) in mapped substitution?
I wanted to define a mapping for flipping the texts on both sides of a pipe (|) character.
For example, substitute
dům|Haus
with
Hause|dům
The substitution command
:s/\([^|]\+\)|\([^|]\+\)/\2|\1/
...
2
votes
1
answer
91
views
Alternate vim mapping
I have a file that looks something like this
\usepackage{tex/Forkurs-1p-2p-laererutdanning-2018-V}
\usepackage{../Sty/hyper}
\begin{document}
\input{tex/Forkurs-1p-2p-laererutdanning-2018-V-...
- 177
1
vote
1
answer
76
views
How do you substitute on previous matches?
For example, if I have the following:
MY_VAR = "hello world"
print "the var %s" % MY_VAR
If I position the cursor on MY_VAR and press *, Vim highlights both matches. Suppose I want to rename this to ...
- 875
0
votes
1
answer
149
views
What is the syntax if I want to replace one directory with another in vim given that I have '/' in it?
If I have this directory: /home/abc/def/apples/
and I want to replace it with this directory: /home/nfl/nfl/nba/ in vim,
what is the syntax? I tried using %s/a/b/g but this command fails.
