I am using Kate for editing some source code.
Unfortunately, I have lots of trailing space in there.
Is there a simple way to clean the whole text document?
I believe there is a simpler way than using a complicated Find/Replace operation with Regular Expressions.
Indeed it is as mentioned in the comments: You can define the behavior on save in the Open/Save config page as described in this blog: https://kate-editor.org/2012/10/27/remove-trailing-spaces/
Related
Yes, we can convert tabs to spaces via Sublime, VS-Code and etc, it's not a big problem.
But what if I want to get rid off this additional action ?
Found answer by adding this line to .nim file :
#? replace(sub = "\t", by = " ")
My additional question is :
What is this #?, how this thing works and what kind of variations I can find also, for example:
#!
#some_chinese_character
It is called a "source code filter", it's like a Nim preprocessor less powerful than macros and templates. You can read about it here: https://nim-lang.org/docs/filters.html
Anyway, I wouldn't recommend using it, but rather using an editor which replaces tabs with spaces, such as vscode. This seems more like an hack than an actual solution.
I like to use vim's auto formatting command but it is causing a problem with me and my boss. At some point someone's editor added blank lines with spaces. When i run gg=G it removes that whitespace and is creating a bunch of noise in my git commits. I still want to be able to format the text but I don't want whitespace removed.
This seems like I need to change a setting somewhere. Any ideas?
There's no built-in option that you can simply set. The closest is autoformatting; with a and w in 'formatoptions', Vim will format as you type, and keep a single trailing space at the end of each line belonging to a paragraph. But that doesn't preserve existing trailing whitespace.
If you need to reindent and reformat with gg=G, that implies that the existing layout is pretty broken. Most people will argue that you shouldn't care about preserving trailing whitespace (itself a bad practice, and usually flagged by Git) in that case.
If you can, limit the scope of the = command, e.g. by applying it selectively only on few (bad) lines, or the visual selection. That will reduce the noise in commits.
If you really need to reformat while preserving trailing whitespace, I would open a diff inside Vim (using Git, the Fugitive plugin makes this very easy), and then manually edit the trailing spaces back in. The effort required in this should further convince you (and your team) that a bit more care about proper editing hygiene benefits everybody :-)
I am trying to use substitute command in vim to enclose all occurences of a particular pattern
\cite{author1}
\cite{author2}
with
(\cite{author1})
(\cite{author2})
Based on other answers in stack exchangeI used the following vim command
%s/\\cite{(\w\+)}/(\\cite{\1})/g
But, no luck. It says "no matches found". I put two back slashes, one of which is supposed to be the escape character. Kindly help.
I know I could use some other editor and finish the job, but I want to know my mistake. Thank you.
please escape ()
%s/\\cite{\(\w\+\)}/(\\cite{\1})/g
You do not need a capture group to get the entire match. You can use \0 or & for the whole match in the replacement portion of your substitution.
:%s/\\cite{\w\+}/(&)/g
If you do want to use a capture group, then you need to escape the capture group/parenthesis.
:%s/\(foo\)/(\1)/g
For more help see:
:h :s%
:h /magic
As mentioned, normally you need escape the parentheses.
You can use very magic mode (\v) to make the regex simpler; removing the need to escape lots of the regex parts, including the parentheses for capturing:
%s/\v(\\cite\{\w+\})/(\1)/g
Knowing what every sign in a regular expression does in vim is sometimes very
difficult, especially for all the modes and configuration variables that this
depends on. For that reason, it is very important to have visual feedback about
what text are we really matching in any moment while crafting regular
expressions.
If you work with neovim, there is a special option called inccommand that you
can enable to live preview the matches and substitution. That way you can figure
out you errors more quickly. This feature is very likely to be included also in
vim in the future, but independently of that, you can also use simple vim to
give you visual feedback if you enable the option incsearch.
With incsearch set, you can watch the matches of / and ? while you write them
just to be sure that the pattern is correct. Later you can exploit a nice
feature from the substitution: if you leave the first section empty, the last
search will be used.
So you could first make the search:
/\\cite{\w\+}/(&)/g
In the meantime, vim will be showing you the matched text visually. Once you
are sure that the pattern is correct press enter, and finally type:
:%s//(\1)<Enter>
Also, in case you want something more powerful than this simple hack, you can go
for my plugin Extend.vim, that can
do that and much more with great visual feedback.
Is there any way using either Vim scripting or search/replace to remove ghost newlines? I have come across times when I have to edit files that other developers using crappy software have left double newlines in like the attached picture.
I would love to find a way in Vim to remove all those stupid double spacing junk so it actually looks like it should.
Running the search-and-replace
%s/\n\n/\r/g
will replace every pair of two newlines with a single one. This will inevitably screw up files that aren't already double-spaced, though, so don't use it blindly.
Shorter solution:
:v:.:d
It those lines are really empty. If there might be white spaces:
:v:^\S*$:d
While editing .scm files it would be great if Vim would automatically put the ending brace ) as soon as I start (. How do I do this?
You can map the opening brace to your liking:
:imap ( ()<left>
Try to use AutoClose plugin.
The simplest answer is to include a map. Eg.:
:inoremap ( ()<left>
The problem is that you would need to add one entry for each symbol you want automatically closed ('{','[','"',etc). Besides, plugins are normally more smart, providing things like detecting the "closing" character and not repeating it.
The problem with the solution above and most plugins, is that they tend break the undo sequence (gundo anyone?), as explained in:help ins-special-special.
Here is list of plugins that do what you ask (from vimtips):
delimitMate by Israel Chauca Fuentes (configurable, and doesn't break undo/redo/repeat, but - break iabbr) also on GitHub
AutoClose by Karl Guertin (auto-closes specific hard-coded characters, but doesn't break undo/redo/repeat)
AutoClose by Thiago Alves (configurable, but breaks undo/redo/repeat)
auto-pairs Auto Pairs by Miao Jiang (configurable, but breaks undo/redo/repeat)
ClosePairs by Edoardo Vacchi (configurable, but breaks undo/redo/repeat)
smartinput by Kana Natsuno (configurable, but breaks undo/redo/repeat)
Besides vimtips, there is another nice explanation of the issue on the web.
I needed one too, and I already tried a few of the plug-ins:
AutoClose, http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1849, is a bit aggressive.
simple pairs, http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2339, depends on Python. If you are on Linux it is not a problem, but on Windows it can be a trouble to match the Vim version to the Python interpreter you have.
My advice would be ClosePairs, that you can find at http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2373 which has been working perfectly for me. It is simple and useful.
There are many tips and plugins on the subject. Have a look at the relevant entry in the vimtips site.
I'm presently using auto-pairs and it works quite very well.
The issues of the the plugin breaking undo/redo/repeat seem to persist among some of the plugins listed above but i don't think its much of an issue (well, at least not to me at the moment).
Just one caveat though, i wasn't able to use :helptags to generate the help file with this plugin as at the time of writing this.
Check out this new plugin: vim-autoclose by Townk. The previously mentioned AutoClose was to aggressive, sometimes behaving in an undesirable way.
There is a problem with using this (via the imap or one of the scripts). You won't be able to repeat the complete edit by using the . command.
e.g. (foo) with . only gets you foo, without the brackets.
It works fine if you insert the brackets normally, as two characters.
You can try downloading the following plugin
AutoClose : Inserts matching bracket, paren, brace or quote
https://github.com/vim-scripts/Auto-Pairs
Tested this plugin for undu redo. 2013 It just works. Also with python-mode plugin.
There is a new plugin by cohama:
lexima.vim (github)
(not yet on vim.org)
This plugin supports the .command!
Afaik, this is the only plugin supporting this.
Also the undo/redo sequence works.