If I do a substitution, for example:
:s/ov/xx/g
To substitute "ov" with "xx". However, if I press the . command on another line, it seems like it isn't repeating that find-and-replace operation. Instead it seems to insert a space when I try it again on the next line.
Why not? Is there a way to re-do that command?
You can repeat the last command made in command-line-mode (those made at the : prompt) with #: and then use ## to repeat the same change thereafter. Using . will repeat the last change that was made in normal-mode.
The builtins are & and :&&
Related
Vim: . repeats the last command. What's the command to repeat the last but one command?
Ex:
I deleted a line using the command dd, and then I deleted a character using the command x.
x is the last command and dd is the last but one command.
The last command x can be repeated using .
But, I want to repeat dd using something like ..
Short answer: there's no such feature native to Vim.
However, the following suggestions should help you get more out of Vim:
For your specific example, instead of typing dd to delete the line you could use the :d Ex (command-line) delete command. This can be later repeated using #: without effecting the . command.
If you're doing something more complicated than deleting a line with dd, you could record it as a macro using q{registername} (where {registername} denotes any unused non-special register name in the range a-z, e.g., qa). After having executed the macro using #{registername} (e.g., #a) it can be repeated by simply running ##.
If you'd like to learn more about other ways of repeating commands, I'd suggest reading repeat.txt from Vim's built-in manual:
:h repeat.txt
This file lists other ways of repeating commands such as using Ex commands and recording / executing macros.
Repeating substitution commands
The most recent :substitute command can be repeated using :s or :&. This uses the same search pattern and substitution string but not the same flags or range (they have to be provided). An even shorter synonym for this repeat command is &. See :help :substitute for more information.
I know how to repeat the last command in Vim. I use ..
But how can I repeat the last macro? It's a little non-comfortable to press #q everytime I want to repeat it.
I tried with . but it just repeats the last command from the macro.
Is there a shorter way of doing that?
Yes, you can use ## to replay the last used macro.
As a bonus, use #: to replay the last ex command. (And then that becomes the "last used macro" that can be repeated with ##.)
I find ## a bit hard to type and as I don't use , much - and it's close enough to .:
:map , ##
In Vim, is there any way to repeat the last command regardless of whether it was an edit or not, and without having the foresight to first record a macro?
E.g. say I type :bn, and want to do it again (it was the wrong file). Pressing . obviously doesn't do it. Or maybe I'm doing gE and want to repeat that (with one keystroke since clearly gE is kinda painful to type).
Perhaps there are some plugins? Similar to this question.
(Even cooler would be to retroactively bind a number of commands to a macro, so one could type 5qa#a or something to repeat the last 5 commands...)
To repeat a command-line command, try #:, To repeat a normal/insert-mode command, try .,
Add below mapping to your .vimrc if you want to shortcut the same:-
:noremap <C-P> #:<CR> - This will map Ctrl+P to previous command-line command. You can map any other combo.
:help repeating will provide the typical repeat commands (like ., #:, etc.). You could try repeat.vim. That may get you closer to what you are looking for.
For motion commands there is no mechanism built into Vim. The Find and To commands (f/F/t/T) have ; and , to repeat and reverse. There are a couple of plugins which extend those bindings to repeat other motion commands:
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2174
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3665
The later should support repeating gE using ;
You can just use "."
Example:
You have "abc" at 10 places in your file and you want to replace it with "def" at 5 places of it.
Step 1: Find first occurance of abc by typing command "/abc"
Step 2: Once cursor is on "abc", Replace abc by command "cw" to take out word "abc"
Step 3: Type in "def" as replacement and press enter to go to command mode
Step 4: To repeat this action just type command "n" to go to next occurrence of abc and type command "." . The command remembers that you replaced "abc" with "def" last time and will perform the same here.
You can map #: to some key for more convenience:
:map <F2> #:
and then it's easier to use it with repeats.
Say I have the following style of lines in a text file:
"12" "34" "some text "
"56" "78" "some more text"
.
.
.
etc.
I want to be able to remove the quotes surrounding the first two columns. What is the best way to do this with Vim (I'm currently using gVim)?
I figured out how to at least delete the beginning quote of each line by using visual mode and then enter the command '<,'>s!^"!!
I'm wondering if there is a way to select an entire column of text (one character going straight down the file... or more than 1, but in this case I would only want one). If it is possible, then would you be able to apply the x command (delete the character) to the entire column.
There could be better ways to do it. I'm looking for any suggestions.
Update
Just and FYI, I combined a couple of the suggestions. My _vimrc file now has the following line in it:
let #q=':%s/"\([0-9]*\)"/\1/g^M'
(Note: THE ^M is CTRLQ + Enter to emulate pressing the Enter key after running the command)
Now I can use a macro via #q to remove all of the quotes from both number columns in the file.
use visual block commands:
start mode with Ctrl-v
specify a motion, e.g. G (to the end of the file),
or use up / down keys
for the selected block specify an action, e.g. 'd' for delete
For more see
:h visual-mode
Control-V is used for block select. That would let you select things in the same character column.
It seems like you want to remove the quotes around the numbers. For that use,
:%s/"\([0-9]*\)"/\1/g
Here is a list of what patterns you can do with vim.
There is one more (sort of ugly) form that will restrict to 4 replacements per line.
:%s/^\( *\)"\([ 0-9]*\)"\([ 0-9]*\)"\([ 0-9]*\)"/\1\2\3\4/g
And, if you have sed handy, you can try these from the shell too.
head -4 filename.txt | sed 's/pattern/replacement/g'
that will try your command on the first 4 lines of the file.
Say if you want to delete all columns but the first one, the simple and easy way is to input this in Vim:
:%!awk '{print $1}'
Or you want all columns but the first one, you can also do this:
:%!awk '{$1="";$0=$0;$1=$1;print}'
Indeed it requires external tool to accomplish the quest, but awk is installed in Linux and Mac by default, and I think folks with no UNIX-like system experience rarely use Vim in Windows, otherwise you probably known how to get a Windows version of awk.
Although this case was pretty simple to fix with a regex, if you want to do something even a bit more advanced I also recommend recording a macro like Bryan Ward. Also macros come easier to me than remembering which characters need to be escaped in vim's regexes. And macros are nice because you can see your changes take place immediately and work on your line transformation in smaller bits at a time.
So in your case you would have pressed qw to start recording a macro in register w (you can of course use any letter you want). I usually start my macros with a ^ to move to the start of the line so the macro doesn't rely on the location of the cursor. Then you could do a f" to jump to the first ", x to delete it, f" to jump to the next " and x to delete that too. Then q to finish recording.
Instead of making your macro end on the next line I actually as late as today figured out you can just V (visually line select) all lines you want to apply your macro to and execute :normal #w which applies your macro in register w to each visually selected line.
See column editing in vim. It describes column insert, but basically it should work in the same way for removing.
You could also create a macro (q) that deletes the quotes and then drops down to the next line. Then you can run it a bunch of times by telling vi how many times to execute it. So if you store the macro to say the letter m, then you can run 100#m and it will delete the quotes for 100 lines. For some more information on macros:
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Macros
The other solutions are good. You can also try...
:1,$s/^"\(\w\+\)"/\1/gc
For more Vim regex help also see http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Search_patterns.
Start visual-block by Ctrl+v.
Jump at the end and select first two columns by pressing: G, EE.
Type: :s/\%V"//g which would result in the following command:
:'<,'>s/\%V"//g
Press Enter and this will remove all " occurrences in the selected block.
See: Applying substitutes to a visual block at Vim Wikia
In Unix the ^ allows you to repeat a command with some text substituted for new text. For example:
csh% grep "stuff" file1 >> Results
grep "stuff" file1
csh% ^file1^file2^
grep "stuff" file2
csh%
Is there a Vim equivalent? There are a lot of times I find myself editing minor things on the command line over and over again.
Specifically for subsitutions: use & to repeat your last substitution on the current line from normal mode.
To repeat for all lines, type :%&
q: to enter the command-line window (:help cmdwin).
You can edit and reuse previously entered ex-style commands in this window.
Once you hit :, you can type a couple characters and up-arrow, and it will character-match what you typed. e.g. type :set and it will climb back through your "sets". This also works for search - just type / and up-arrow. And /abc up-arrow will feed you matching search strings counterchronologically.
There are 2 ways.
You simply hit the . key to perform an exact replay of the very last command (other than movement). For example, I type cw then hello to change a word to "hello". After moving my cursor to a different word, I hit . to do it again.
For more advanced commands like a replace, after you have performed the substition, simply hit the : key then the ↑ up arrow key, and it fills your command line with the same command.
To repeat the previous substition on all lines with all of the same flags you can use the mapping g&.
If you have made a substitution in either normal mode :s/A/B/g (the current line) or visual mode :'<,>'s/A/B/g (lines included in the current selection) and you want to repeat that last substitution, you can:
Move to another line (normal mode) and simply press &, or if you like, :-&-<CR> (looks like :&), to affect the current line without highlighting, or
Highlight a range (visual mode) and press :-&-<CR> (looks like :'<,'>&) to affect the range of lines in the selection.
With my limited knowledge of Vim, this solves several problems. For one, the last visual substitution :'<,'>s/A/B/g is available as the last command (:-<UP>) from both normal and visual mode, but always produces an error from normal mode. (It still refers to the last selection from visual mode - not to the empty selection at the cursor like I assumed - and my example substitution exhausts every match in one pass.) Meanwhile, the last normal mode substitution starts with :s, not :'<,'>s, so you would need to modify it to use in visual mode. Finally, & is available directly from normal mode and so it accepts repetitions and other alternatives to selections, like 2& for the next two lines, and as user ruohola said, g& for the entire file.
In both versions, pressing : then & works as if you had pressed : and then retyped s/A/B/, so the mode you were in last time is irrelevant and only the current cursor line or selection determines the line(s) to be affected. (Note that the trailing flags like g are cleared too, but come next in this syntax too, as in :&g/: '<,'>&g. This is a mixed blessing in my opinion, as you can/must re-specify flags here, and standalone & doesn't seem to take flags at all. I must be missing something.)
I welcome suggestions and corrections. Most of this comes from experimentation just now so I'm sure there's a lot more to it, but hopefully it helps anyway.
Take a look at this: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Using_command-line_history for explanation.