Let's take the following scenario:
I have the following line of text:
set number
I want to look up what number does in the help section, so I place my cursor over it:
set |number
And press K. Easy enough. However, about 30% of the time it will go to the 'wrong section', based on vim's best guess. For example, for this one it takes me to:
Is there a way to, for example, go to the 'next match' in vim's guesstimate straight from the help section? Or do I have to either Google this or type in :h number<ctrl-D> to see what other options it might be in:
Related
I'm using tags in Vim, with tagstack enabled.
I use Ctrl-] to select a tag, Vim gives me three possibilities, I choose the second.
I then return to the original context with :pop.
I'd then like to select the same tag again, but the place I jumped to last time is not on the tagstack, because I only jumped to it, not from it. I know I can use Ctrl-] and select the second of three again, but I'd like the facility to simply go where I went before.
Is this possible?
You can use Control-o to jump to the last place you visited. It is not exactly what you described but effectively you reach the line you want faster.
Also, you can hit 2 Control-t if you want to visit the second option, which seems to skip the choosing part.
Otherwise, it doesn't seem to be possible as you actually lose the information about the tag when you :pop.
Seeing the help of vim I have problem to understand what refers the word count I see it many times while reading the manual:
i Insert text before the cursor [count] times
It would be awesome if you give an example for it.
Vim's "Count" allows you to repeat an operator or command several times. For example, if you are on the first cursor of this line:
Hello world, how are you?
And you type dw you will have
world, how are you?
Rather than typing dwdwdwdw, you may simply type 4dw or d4w and you will have
are you?
More specific to your example, you may type something like 5ihello<esc> and this will insert
hellohellohellohellohello
Like Kevin said in a comment, you can read up more in the help docs with :h count, which says:
*count* *[count]*
[count] An optional number that may precede the command to multiply
or iterate the command. If no number is given, a count of one
is used, unless otherwise noted. Note that in this manual the
[count] is not mentioned in the description of the command,
but only in the explanation. This was done to make the
commands easier to look up. If the 'showcmd' option is on,
the (partially) entered count is shown at the bottom of the
window. You can use <Del> to erase the last digit (|N<Del>|).
Just in case somebody is wondering how count plus insert works, you have to type a number before pressing i, then it will enter in insert mode, where you can type what you want, after you press esc to go back to normal mode, it will repeat count times what you typed.
Can you provide a link to the place in the documentation where you are confused? I would have posted this as a comment instead of an answer, but my reputation is not high enough. In attempting to answer your question without clarification:
Usually [count] can be substituted with a number.
For example; consider the delete command d. If you position your cursor in the middle of a text line and type :d[count] (ex: :d4) then press an arrow key (left or right arrow); you will end up deleting [count] (e.g. 4 characters) in the corresponding direction of the arrow key.
In the case of insert I am not sure to what the argumentcount is referring.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that you must hit the enter key after :d4. Then press the left arrow key. Of course, in order for VIM to realize that you are entering a command you must exit insert mode by pressing the esc key prior to entering the command :d4.
this is a simple query about the searching in vim editor.
consider that i searched for a string like "str" with
/str
now after this search i wanted to search for "strcat" like
/strcat
but, the point in here is that i dont want to type entire /str again.... just wanted to add the new text to /str. that is when we made the first search we type /str and for the second search i just wanted to type cat for searching the entire /strcat.
can any of you vi guru's tell me if it is possible for us to do some search like this in vi.
thanks in advance
The / key begins a search string. up arrow recalls the previous line(s). Therefore,
/ up-arrow cat
will resume your search.
Besides up-arrow to get the previous search, you can also do /^f to be able to fully edit many previous searches. (That's / followed by Ctrl+F). Put the cursor on the previous search that you want to edit, edit it, and hit return.
Others have answered the question you asked, but on the off chance that incremental search would better suit your workflow, I thought I would mention it.
If you're only searching once and finding out that what you're searching for is not unique enough and you need to add more characters, incremental search will show you that before you press enter.
Put the following in your .vimrc to enable incremental search:
set incsearch
How can I bring back the last string I used for a search or a search&replace?
For example, assume that I enter :%s/some_text/some_other_text/gc and vim gives me the E486: Patterns not found: some_text error message back. I then realize that I actually meant to write some_magic_text instead of some_text. At that point, how can I get back my original string in the bottom command row (or whatever it is called) so I can change it and do a second search? Is there a nifty little command for that?
In this brief example it looks unnecessary, but when the text you are looking to replace is mighty long and you just typed one letter wrong, it is fantastically annoying to have to retype everything.
And I am using MacVim if that makes any difference.
From the normal mode, hit q/ to navigate through your search history!
Check out this vimvcast which explains what you want.
More generally, you can recall any command you have previously typed by entering the first few characters, and then use arrow multiple times to navigate in history.
In your case, you could type:
:%s<Up>
See :help history
This answer might be good an improvement to what you are after, after all.
Use search with highlighting, to interactively check if the regex you are crafting is definitely working, and then use it in a search-replace.
:se is (incsearch, better put se is in your .vimrc)
/<search term>
check with n/N if you are happy with the matches
:s%//<replace term>/g
When omitting the <search term> in the search-replace in 4., the last used search will be used.
For acessing the list of last (search-replace) commands use q:, or as already noted q/ for the list of last search terms.
Bonus:
When using :se gd, s/<search>/<replace> will behave as s/<search>/<replace>/g.
Accessing just the first search match in each line can then still be done with adding /g, so essentially both behaviours are just switched.
/ and then up to bring up the last search query.
I know that I can get word completion through CTRL+N & CTRL+P and code completion through omnifunc with CTRL+X CTRL+O. I additionally tried Supertab (very nice), because I'm used to TAB-completion. That all worked all right. I would like to see possible matches while I'm typing, so I also tried autocomplpop.vim, witch does just that.
What I like to accomplish though, would be a combination of both together with a little twist: I would like to see suggestions pop up as I type (just like with autocompop) but when I use TAB the word should be expanded only to the largest common match:
foo bar testor booze test baz teter
te<TAB>
After I type te in the 2nd line, the popup should suggest test, teter and testor.
When I press TAB, it should do nothing, because there is no more common ground than te. After I typed an additional s and press TAB, it should expand tes to test (because it is the smallest common ground) and to testor after a 2nd TAB.
Edit: I try to be more clear...
te<TAB>
should do nothing because "we" don't know if a 't' (teter) or an 's' (test, testor) should follow.
tes<TAB>
should expand to test (because that works for both - test and testor - and teter is no longer a possible match).
test<TAB>
should expand to testor (only possible match).
Well, the suggestions popup is just bonus, but I really would love to see the TAB behavior. Hope I don't get to esoteric here and you can help me out with some script-tricks or plugins to tame VIM to do just that.
:set completeopt=longest,menu,preview
maybe?
(I'm not sure if your statement
"when I press TAB, it should do nothing, because there is no more common ground than te"
conflicts with your later statement
"to testor after a 2nd TAB."
It seems to me that there's no more common ground than "test" at that point... Unless you mean the first tab goes to the longest common ground, and then the subsequent tabs cycle through the other matches, in which case you're after what I have above...)