Say I just ran a linter in the terminal and I have a bunch of linter output in the standard format:
path/to/some/file.foo:45:23: This is an error message
path/to/some/file.foo:46:12: This is another error message
...
I am currently opening each file manually in Neovim, navigating to the correct line and fixing the issue.
Instead, I want to populate the quickfix or location list in Vim or Neovim with this information so I can quickly jump to each spot and fix the error.
What would be the simplest/quickest way to achieve this?
That's what the :help -q command-line flag is for:
$ vim -q errorfile
You can redirect the output of your linter to a file and then pass that file to Vim's -q:
$ yourlinter file.foo > errorfile
$ vim -q errorfile
If your shell allows it, you can use process substitution to remove intermediary steps and ghost files:
$ vim -q <(yourlinter)
Or, if you already ran your linter and forgot to pass it to Vim, you can re-run it and pass it to Vim via process substitution:
$ vim -q <(!!)
Since this is a situation I often find myself in, I added this command to my bash config years ago:
# open Vim with output of last command in quickfix
vimq() {
vim -q <($(fc -nl -1))
}
which allows me to do:
$ yourlinter file.foo
(output of linter)
$ vimq
NOTE: fc -nl -1 is a more portable—therefore preferable in a scripting context—way to recall the last command than !!. See $ man fc.
NOTE: you only mentioned the quickfix list in your question but, if you also want the quickfix window, you can add one more item to the command: :help :cwindow.
$ vim -q <(!!) +cw
Related
By reading this question I learned that you can give -c to vim such that it will call a command. The question is then answered by calling vim -c startinsert. Good, but what if I want to give other commands? I only know the shortcuts like i for :startinsert.
For example I'd like to write vim -c gotoend but it doesn't exists.
After some reading, all : commands, which are ex commands are written here and in man vim, but where do I find a lis or method to know what can be done?
The commands for options -c are called ex-command named after ex(tendended line editor). The list of commands are in vimdoc and vimhelp.
The command to jump to the end of file is just :$ so you can do this in command line:
vim -c $ <file>
Please note you probably better escape or quote $ as it's a shell metacharacter:
vim -c \$ <file>
or
vim -c '$' <file>
:help :normal. Also note that instead of -c command you can use +command.
With that, I'd typically say vim +"norm G" foo.txt to start at the bottom. You could even alias it: alias vimbottom='vim +"norm G"'; then you can use vimbottom foo.txt to start at the bottom, if you prefer.
where do I find a lis or method to know what can be done
There is no better resource for Vim than its :help. And I don't know any place that has all the ex-commands in one place, since it would be a huge list. (EDIT: :help :index actually has that. Thanks, Christian Brabandt!)
I want to script vim to edit files from the command line. For example I want to do something along the lines of:
vim -<SOME_OPTION> 'Iworld<Esc>bIhello <Esc>:wq helloworld.txt<CR>'
or:
echo 'Iworld<Esc>bIhello <Esc>:wq helloworld.txt<CR>' | vim
and have it save the file helloworld.txt with a body of hello world
Is this possible? I've tried a few different approaches but none seem to do it. I realize I can do things like vim +PluginInstall to run Ex commands from the command line, but I'd love to be able to string together arbitrary motions
This can be achieved with the + flag and the :normal command:
$ vim +"norm Iworld" +"norm Ihello " +"wq helloworld.txt"
I think what you are looking for is vim's -w/W and -s {scriptin} option. Well in your case you should make a scriptfile, and with -s file to let vim execute all your "key presses"
I think vimgolf has used these options too.
I'm trying to craft a command to dump vim's highlighting information to STDOUT. I can write successfully to a file like this:
vim +'redir >outfile' +'hi' +'redir END' +'q'
After this, outfile contains exactly what I want. But I'd rather output to STDOUT to pipe to a command which converts that highlighting info to CSS.
This approach tries to redirect the command to a register, write to the current buffer, then send that output to tee.
vim -E +'redir #a' +'silent! hi' +'redir END' +'put a' +'w !tee' +'q!' > outfile
This is pretty close, but outputs a leading paging message (255 more lines...) and some ANSI escape crap at the end. Setting nomore did not squelch the message for me. I'm looking to send the exact output sent to outfile in the first command to STDOUT.
Vim supports outputting to stderr, which we can redirect to stdout to solve your problem. Careful though, this feature is intended only for debugging purposes, so it has a few edges. Here's a short sketch of how you could do this.
First, we will be running Vim in silent or batch mode, which is enabled with the -e -s flags (:h -s-ex). We disable swap files -n because they will be a bother if we need to kill Vim when it gets stuck.
Instead of passing Ex commands as command line arguments we source a script file with -S. Create a file hi.vim with the following contents:
verbose highlight
:verbose is necessary to make Vim output the :highlight message to stderr. Let's see what we have so far:
$ vim -n -e -s -S hi.vim
Don't run this yet or you'll get stuck in the darkness of a headless Vim!
Add a :quit command and redirect stderr to stdout:
$ vim -n -e -s -S hi.vim +quit 2>&1
Voilà! Now pipe this mess into any file or utility at your heart's desire.
There's a very thorough wiki article on this topic, "Vim as a system interpreter for vimscript".
Finer points: Due to how Vim interacts with the terminal environment it can't write proper unix LF line endings in batch mode output. Instead it writes line endings which look like CRLF line endings.
Consider adding a filter to get rid of those:
$ vim -n -e -s -S hi.vim +quit 2>&1 | tr -d '\r' | my-css-util
This answers the general question of how to "Redirect ex command to STDOUT in vim", but it doesn't necessarily work for your :hi problem, because of this constraint caused by the -e -s flags:
'term' and $TERM are not used.
If you're working with Unix compatible environment, you can always use a special file, e.g.:
ex +"redir>>/dev/stdout | hi | redir END" -scq!
This will print any Vi/Ex command into standard output which you can parse further.
I ran into this by mistake while running your first command. The second time I ran it, it went to stdout. I guess this is because the file already existed. So you can try (sending to something that already exists):
vim +'redir >/dev/null' +'hi' +'redir END' +'q'
I am a long time Vimmer. However, I keep switching to shell to make searches. This avoids me to use the quickfix functionality.
The main reason for switching to shell is that when I use grep from inside Vim (with :grep), I cannot follow progress.
Because the code base I search is usually wide, I really appreciate immediate feedback.
It gives me a chance to find out that my search expression is wrong before the full results have been displayed.
This allow me to cancel the search, refine the expression then relaunch the search.
Any hint how to reproduce this pattern inside Vim would be appreciated.
I don't see the same vim behaviour as you. When I run :grep, I still see the results in vim (not in the quickfix) before the search completes (but I cannot do anything until the search is done).
I even tried using no vim settings or plugins:
gvim -u NONE -U NONE
If that's not your behaviour, check your grepprg. Mine is the default:
:verbose set grepprg
grepprg=grep -n $* /dev/null
When I use run grep -e "score" -R /etc I see this output in vim:
:!grep -n -e "score" -R /etc /dev/null 2>&1| tee /tmp/voLcaNS/232
It's possible that your system is missing tee or your vim doesn't use it (I'm using Vim 7.2 on Ubuntu 10.10). tee takes the text passed to it and writes it to a file and to stdout.
If you're looking for a way to have the quickfix get updated with your search results and have vim not block while you're searching, then you could write a script that:
searches with grep as a background process and redirects to a file
every second until grep completes, have vim load the file in quickfix (cgetfile) (you can tell vim to do something from another process with --remote-expr)
You can try my AsyncCommand plugin to get your code started. It does the above, except that it only loads the file when the search is complete.
Are you familiar with ack.vim at all? It doesn't use the quickfix window, but uses a separate buffer in a split. However, it's rather faster results come right back to the vim frame.
This may be due to buffering between grep and tee, not vim itself. To test this theory, run grep from the command-line and pipe the output through tee (i.e. grep <pattern> <files> | tee temp.out). If it behaves the same as you observe within vim, then buffering is occurring.
To work around, install expect (sudo apt-get install expect-dev on Ubuntu 10.10) and grepprg to unbuffer grep -n $* /dev/null. (See Turn off buffering in pipe).
Take a look at :vimgrep in the online documentation. It displays the file name being searched and updates as it goes.
There are three ways to do a search in entire projects.
System command grep(fast, but not working well with Ouickfix list)
=>$ grep -n Example *
Vim internal grep(slow, but have a strong pattern support)
:vim[grep] /{pattern}/[g][j] {file} ...
System plugin ack(perfect)
1 install ack
brew install ack
2 add below configs to your .vimrc
:set grepprg=ack\ --nongroup\ --column\ $*
:set grepformat=%f:%l:%c:%m
3 then you can use grep to call ack in vim like
:grep "object\." app/**/*.rb
I'm looking for the best way to do search-and-replace (with confirmation) across all project files in Vim. By "project files" I mean files in the current directory, some of which do not have to be open.
One way to do this could be to simply open all of the files in the current directory:
:args ./**
and then do the search and replace on all open files:
:argdo %s/Search/Replace/gce
However, when I do this, Vim's memory usage jumps from a couple dozen of MB to over 2 GB, which doesn't work for me.
I also have the EasyGrep plugin installed, but it almost never works—either it doesn't find all the occurrences, or it just hangs until I press CtrlC. So far my preferred way to accomplish this task it to ack-grep for the search term, using it's quickfix window open any file that contains the term and was not opened before, and finally :bufdo %s/Search/Replace/gce.
I'm looking either for a good, working plugin that can be used for this, or alternatively a command/sequence of commands that would be easier than the one I'm using now.
The other big option here is simply not to use vim:
sed -i 's/pattern/replacement/' <files>
or if you have some way of generating a list of files, perhaps something like this:
find . -name *.cpp | xargs sed -i 's/pattern/replacement/'
grep -rl 'pattern1' | xargs sed -i 's/pattern2/replacement/'
and so on!
EDIT: Use cfdo command instead of cdo to significantly reduce the amount of commands that will be run to accomplish this (because cdo runs commands on each element while cfdo runs commands on each file)
Thanks to the recently added cdo command, you can now do this in two simple commands using whatever grep tool you have installed. No extra plugins required!:
1. :grep <search term>
2. :cdo %s/<search term>/<replace term>/gc
3. (If you want to save the changes in all files) :cdo update
(cdo executes the given command to each term in the quickfix list, which your grep command populates.)
(Remove the c at the end of the 2nd command if you want to replace each search term without confirming each time)
I've decided to use ack and Perl to solve this problem in order to take advantage of the more powerful full Perl regular expressions rather than the GNU subset.
ack -l 'pattern' | xargs perl -pi -E 's/pattern/replacement/g'
Explanation
ack
ack is an awesome command line tool that is a mix of grep, find, and full Perl regular expressions (not just the GNU subset). Its written in pure Perl, its fast, it has syntax highlighting, works on Windows and its friendlier to programmers than the traditional command line tools. Install it on Ubuntu with sudo apt-get install ack-grep.
xargs
Xargs is an old unix command line tool. It reads items from standard input and executes the command specified followed by the items read for standard input. So basically the list of files generated by ack are being appended to the end of the perl -pi -E 's/pattern/replacemnt/g' command.
perl -pi
Perl is a programming language. The -p option causes Perl to create a loop around your program which iterates over filename arguments. The -i option causes Perl to edit the file in place. You can modify this to create backups. The -E option causes Perl to execute the one line of code specified as the program. In our case the program is just a Perl regex substitution. For more information on Perl command line options perldoc perlrun. For more information on Perl see http://www.perl.org/.
Greplace works well for me.
There's also a pathogen ready version on github.
maybe do this:
:noautocmd vim /Search/ **/*
:set hidden
:cfirst
qa
:%s//Replace/gce
:cnf
q
1000#a
:wa
Explanation:
:noautocmd vim /Search/ **/* ⇒ lookup (vim is an abbreviation for vimgrep) pattern in all files in all subdirectories of the cwd without triggering autocmds (:noautocmd), for speed's sake.
:set hidden ⇒ allow having modified buffers not displayed in a window (could be in your vimrc)
:cfirst ⇒ jump to first search result
qa ⇒ start recording a macro into register a
:%s//Replace/gce ⇒ replace all occurrences of the last search pattern (still /Search/ at that time) with Replace:
several times on a same line (g flag)
with user confirmation (c flag)
without error if no pattern found (e flag)
:cnf ⇒ jump to next file in the list created by the vim command
q ⇒ stop recording macro
1000#a ⇒ play macro stored in register a 1000 times
:wa ⇒ save all modified buffers
* EDIT * Vim 8 way:
Starting with Vim 8 there is a better way to do it, as :cfdo iterates on all files in the quickfix list:
:noautocmd vim /Search/ **/*
:set hidden
:cfdo %s//Replace/gce
:wa
Populate :args from a shell command
It's possible (on some operating systems1)) to supply the files for :args via a shell command.
For example, if you have ack2 installed,
:args `ack -l pattern`
will ask ack to return a list of files containing 'pattern' and put these on the argument list.
Or with plain ol' grep i guess it'd be:
:args `grep -lr pattern .`
You can then just use :argdo as described by the OP:
:argdo %s/pattern/replacement/gce
Populate :args from the quickfix list
Also check out nelstrom's answer to a related question describing a simple user defined command that populates the arglist from the current quickfix list. This works great with many commands and plugins whose output ends up in the quickfix list (:vimgrep, :Ack3, :Ggrep4).
The sequence to perform a project wide search could then be done with:
:vimgrep /pattern/ **/*
:Qargs
:argdo %s/findme/replacement/gc
where :Qargs is the call to the user defined command that populates the arglist from the quickfix list.
You'll also find links in the ensuing discussion to simple plugins that get this workflow down to 2 or 3 commands.
Links
:h {arglist} - vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/editing.html#{arglist}
ack - betterthangrep.com/
ack.vim - github.com/mileszs/ack.vim
fugitive - github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive
One more option in 2016, far.vim plugin:
1. :grep <search term> (or whatever you use to populate the quickfix window)
2. :cfdo %s/<search term>/<replace term>/g | update
Step 1 populates the quickfix list with items you want. In this case, it's propagated with search terms you want to change via grep.
cfdo runs the command following on each file in the quickfix list. Type :help cfdo for details.
s/<search term>/<replace term>/g replaces each term. /g means replace every occurrence in the file.
| update saves the file after every replace.
I pieced this together based upon this answer and its comments, but felt it deserved its own answer since it's all in one place.
If you don't mind of introducing external dependency, I have brewed a plugin ctrlsf.vim (depends on ack or ag) to do the job.
It can format and display search result from ack/ag, and synchronize your changes in result buffer to actual files on disk.
Maybe following demo explains more
Make sure you’re using Neovim (or Vim 7.4.8+, but really just use Neovim)
Install FZF for the command line and as a vim plugin
Install Ag, so that it’s available automatically to FZF in vim
If using iTerm2 on OSX, set the alt/option key to Esc+
Usage
Search the text you want to change in the current directory and it’s children with
:Ag text
Keep typing to fuzzy filter items
Select items with alt-a
Deselect items with alt-d
Enter will populate the quickfix list
:cfdo %s/text/newText/g | :w
Now you have chabges made inside Vim NeoVim
source
You can do it with shell and vim's ex-mode. This has the added benefit of not needing to memorize other search-and-replace escape sequences.
Any command that can list files will work (rg -l, grep -rl, fd...). For example in bash:
for f in $(rg -l Search); do
vim -Nes "$f" <<EOF
%s/Search/Replace/g
wq
EOF
done
You can use any command, those prefixed with : in command mode, the same way you would inside vim, just drop the : at the start
I think that is because you have a huge amount of files been captured in memory. For my case, I do this by group files in different types, for example:
:args **/*.md
argdo <command>
:args **/*.haml
argdo <command>
Basically, I wanted the replace in a single command and more importantly within vim itself
Based on the answer by #Jefromi i've created a keyboard shortcut, which I had set in my .vimrc file like this
nmap <leader>r :!grep -r -l * \| xargs sed -i -e 's///g'
now from the vim, on a stroke of leader+r I get the command loaded in vim, which i edit like below,
:!grep -r -l <find> <file pattern> | xargs sed -i -e 's/<find>/<replace>/g'
Hence, I do the replace with a single command and more importantly within vim itself