I want to create a new file using vi editor from command line and add a string to it multiple times say 100. Using vi -S command.script file.txt is supposed to do the trick where a new file file.txt will be created and the commands given in command.script file can write to this file. My command.script contains
:%100a hello world
:wq
But its's not working, what I am doing wrong?
If you interactively execute :%100a hello world in a Vim session, you'll get E488: Trailing characters. Looking up :help :a:
:{range}a[ppend][!] Insert several lines of text below the specified
line. If the {range} is missing, the text will be
inserted after the current line. [...]
These two commands will keep on asking for lines, until you type a line
containing only a ".".
tells you that the text has to be put in following lines (and concluded by a line with only a . character).
Or did you mean to use the normal mode a command? (That one takes a [count] to multiply; your %100 range is wrong, too!)
You can also use the low-level function append(), repeating the string with repeat().
summary
$append
hello world
[...]
hello world
.
execute "$normal! 100ahello world\<CR>"
" Easier with o instead of a:
$normal! 100ohello world
call append('$', repeat(['hello world'], 100))
non-Vim alternatives
But honestly, if that is your real use case (and not just a simplified toy example), you don't need Vim at all for this. Here's one example for the Bash shell:
$ for i in $(seq 100); do echo "hello world" >> file.txt; done
Related
My python script can take a series of bitwise operators as one of its arguments. They all work fine except for "=<<" which is roll left, and "=>>" which is roll right. I run my script like ./script.py -b +4,-4,=>>10,=<<1, where anything after -b can be any combination of similar operations. As soon as the terminal sees "<<" though, it just drops the cursor to a new line after the command and asks for more input instead of running the script. When it sees ">>", my script doesn't process the arguments correctly. I know it's because bash uses these characters for a specific purpose, but I'd like to get around it while still using "=>>" and "=<<" in my arguments for my script. Is there any way to do it without enclosing the argument in quotation marks?
Thank you for your help.
You should enclose the parameters that contain special symbols into single quotation marks (here, echo represents your script):
> echo '+4,-4,=>>10,=<<1'
+4,-4,=>>10,=<<1
Alternatively, save the parameters to a file (say, params.txt) and read them from the file onto the command line using the backticks:
> echo `cat params.txt`
+4,-4,=>>10,=<<1
Lastly, you can escape some offending symbols:
> echo +4,-4,=\>\>10,=\<\<1
+4,-4,=>>10,=<<1
I have a file called test, I open it using vi as such:
vi test
Now I want to insert a line through a shell command, for simplicity I use a printf:
:r! printf %s hello
However the line that is entered is
tests
i.e. the name of the file with a s appended.
If I enter the same command in terminal directly, it works fine.
What I want to do is ultimately be able to encode a string in base64 and enter it on the same line as where my cursor is in vi, so that I won't have to copy the string in a separate terminal, encode it, and copy it back into vi. How can I do this? What am I doing wrong?
The first stage of processing a command line in vim is expanding it. % is expanded to the name of the current file — test in your case. %s is expanded to tests.
To avoid expanding protect the special character with a backslash:
:r! printf \%s hello
:r !program opens a new line, inserts my program's output and then inserts a line after it.
I simply want to insert the output right where the cursor is without that additional mess.
I figured I can:
Run a before macro
mai^M^[`a
"Mark where I'm at, insert a line and go back
Run my command
:r !echo -ne "line1\nline2\nline3"
Run an after macro (cleanup the lines)
$mb:j!^M`a:j!^M`b
"Go to the end of inserted outpu
"Mark it b
"Join with the next line
"Go to the first mark
"Delete the inserted newline with :j!
"Go to the second mark
How can I combine this into a single command?
I'd like to be able to do:
:Readhere !echo -ne "line1\nline2\nline3"
where :Readhere would be my custom command.
This might do what you want. (You don't need the !)
command! -nargs=1 ReadHere exec 'normal! i' . system(<q-args>)
This creates a command called ReadHere that takes everything as a quoted argument and passes it directly to the system command. Then we use exec to insert everything in normal mode. (This might not be robust enough)
Example: Starting buffer is
one two three
Running :ReadHere echo -ne "line1\nline2\nline3" where the cursor is on the w produces
one tline1
line2
line3wo three
What is the special character which indicate first ?
if we do
$ vi .bashrc
$ source !$
this !$ will replaced by .bashrc
because ! means previous line(am I correct?), $ means last word (for sure)
then what is first?
I want to insert some string in every line in vi editor using
:%s/find-key-word/replaced-keyword/g
in here, if I put
:%s/$/example/g
in vi editor, it will append in all lines with example.
I want to insert all in front of all string every line.
I know I can use visual block (ctrl+v) and select all front lines and insert (shift+i) insert some word and escape(esc) will do the same... but I want to do in one shot..
please let me know how to do..
Thanks in advance
There are two questions, so you are getting two kinds of answers :)
The bash command history has only a passing similarity to the vi regular expression syntax.
^ is the beginning of line in vi. $ is the end of line in vi.
!!:0 is one way of accessing the first word of the previous command in bash
!$ is one way of accessing the last word of the previous command in bash
To indicate beginning of line, the symbol used is:
^
See an example:
$ cat a
hello!
this is me
testing some
stuff
$ sed 's/^/XXX/' a
XXXhello!
XXXthis is me
XXXtesting some
XXXstuff
The character you are looking for is ^.
For example, :%s/^/example/g will prepend all lines with the string example.
In bash, !^ refers to the first argument of the previous command, and !$ the last argument.
I have a 2GB text file on my linux box that I'm trying to import into my database.
The problem I'm having is that the script that is processing this rdf file is choking on one line:
mismatched tag at line 25462599, column 2, byte 1455502679:
<link r:resource="http://www.epuron.de/"/>
<link r:resource="http://www.oekoworld.com/"/>
</Topic>
=^
I want to replace the </Topic> with </Line>. I can't do a search/replace on all lines but I do have the line number so I'm hoping theres some easy way to just replace that one line with the new text.
Any ideas/suggestions?
sed -i yourfile.xml -e '25462599s!</Topic>!</Line>!'
sed -i '25462599 s|</Topic>|</Line>|' nameoffile.txt
The tool for editing text files in Unix, is called ed (as opposed to sed, which as the name implies is a stream editor).
ed was once intended as an interactive editor, but it can also easily scripted. The way ed works, is that all commands take an address parameter. The way to address a specific line is just the line number, and the way to change the addressed line(s) is the s command, which takes the same regexp that sed would. So, to change the 42nd line, you would write something like 42s/old/new/.
Here's the entire command:
FILENAME=/path/to/whereever
LINENUMBER=25462599
ed -- "${FILENAME}" <<-HERE
${LINENUMBER}s!</Topic>!</Line>!
w
q
HERE
The advantage of this is that ed is standardized, while the -i flag to sed is a proprietary GNU extension that is not available on a lot of systems.
Use "head" to get the first 25462598 lines and use "tail" to get the remaining lines (starting at 25462601). Though... for a 2GB file this will likely take a while.
Also are you sure the problem is just with that line and not somewhere previous (ie. the error looks like an XML parse error which might mean the actual problem is someplace else).
My shell script:
#!/bin/bash
awk -v line=$1 -v new_content="$2" '{
if (NR == line) {
print new_content;
} else {
print $0;
}
}' $3
Arguments:
first: line number you want change
second: text you want instead original line contents
third: file name
This script prints output to stdout then you need to redirect. Example:
./script.sh 5 "New fifth line text!" file.txt
You can improve it, for example, by taking care that all your arguments has expected values.