I try to substitute some text in highlighted text in Vim - vim

I try to select some text in a sentence and substitute an character in the range of the highlighted text.
e.g.
This is my masterpiece document $which$ has many dollar signs on it. $For example$
I only highlight $For example$ and try to substitute two dollars signs with '|'
I have tried the following command:
:'<,>'s/\$/\|/gc <CR>
I use 'v' to highlight in normal
But above command replaces all the dollar signs in the sentence with '|' instread
This is what I got after above command:
This is my masterpiece document |which| has many signs on it. |For example|
Does anyone have any idea what is wrong with my substitute command?

With the selection made, type
s/\%Vpattern/replace
So in your case
:'<,>'s/\%V\$/\|/gc <CR>
Note if you are doing a very magic search (\v at the beginning of the search), omit the backslash and just type %V
:h \%V explains it pretty well:
Match inside the Visual area.
Vim is not very user friendly in general and things you expect to work, like replacing inside a selection, are not automatic.
If the main thing you do with selected text is a replacement, this mapping might be useful, which always prefixes the search with \%V when you type : when visual mode is active.
" Turn on "match inside visual selection" by default when pressing
" : with text highlighted
vnoremap : :\%V

Related

How to convert visual selection from unicode to the corresponding character in vim command?

I'm trying to convert multiple instances of Unicode codes to their corresponding characters.
I have some text with this format:
U+00A9
And I want to generate the following next to it:
©
I have tried to select the code in visual mode and use the selection range '<,'> in command mode as input for i_CTRL_V but I don't know how to use special keys on a command.
I haven't found anything useful in the manual with :help command-mode . I could solve this problem using other tools but I want to improve my vim knowledge. Any hint is appreciated.
Edit:
As #m_mlvx has pointed out my goal is to visually select, then run some command that looks up the Unicode and does the substitution. Manually input a substitution like :s/U+00A9/U+00A9 ©/g is not what I'm interested in as it would require manually typing each of the special characters on every substitution.
Any hint is appreciated.
Here are a whole lot of them…
:help i_ctrl-v is about insert mode and ranges matter in command-line mode so :help command-mode is totally irrelevant.
When they work on text, Ex commands only work on lines, not arbitrary text. This makes ranges like '<,'> irrelevant in this case.
After carefully reading :help i_ctrl-v_digit, linked from :help i_ctrl-v, we can conclude that it is supposed to be used:
with a lowercase u,
without the +,
without worrying about the case of the value.
So both of these should be correct:
<C-v>u00a9
<C-v>u00A9
But your input is U+00A9 so, even if you somehow manage to "capture" that U+00A9, you won't be able to use it as-is: it must be sanitized first. I would go with a substitution but, depending on how you want to use that value in the end, there are probably dozens of methods:
substitute('U+00A9', '\(\a\)+\(.*\)', '\L\1\2', '')
Explanation:
\(\a\) captures an alphabetic character.
+ matches a literal +.
\(.*\) captures the rest.
\L lowercases everything that comes after it.
\1\2 reuses the two capture groups above.
From there, we can imagine a substitution-based method. Assuming "And I want to generate the following next to it" means that you want to obtain:
U+00A9©
you could do:
v<motion>
y
:call feedkeys("'>a\<C-v>" . substitute(#", '\(\a\)+\(.*\)', '\L\1\2', '') . "\<Esc>")<CR>
Explanation:
v<motion> visually selects the text covered by <motion>.
y yanks it to the "unnamed register" #".
:help feedkeys() is used as low-level way to send a complex series of characters to Vim's input queue. It allows us to build the macro programatically before executing it.
'> moves the cursor to the end of the visual selection.
a starts insert mode after the cursor.
<C-v> + the output of the substitution inserts the appropriate character.
That snippet begs for being turned into a mapping, though.
In case you would like to just convert unicodes to corresponding characters, you could use such nr2char function:
:%s/U+\(\x\{4\}\)/\=nr2char('0x'.submatch(1))/g
Brief explanation
U+\(\x\{4\}\) - search for a specific pattern (U+ and four hexadecimal characters which are stored in group 1)
\= - substitute with result of expression
'0x'.submatch(1) - append 0x to our group (U+00A9 -> 0x00A9)
In case you would like to have unicode character next to text you need to modify slightly right side (use submatch(0) to get full match and . to append)
In case someone wonders how to compose the substitution command:
'<,'>s/\<[uU]+\(\x\+\)\>/\=submatch(0)..' '..nr2char(str2nr(submatch(1), 16), 1)/g
The regex is:
word start
Letter "U" or "u"
Literal "plus"
One or more hex digits (put into "capture group")
word end
Then substituted by (:h sub-replace-expression) concatenation of:
the whole matched string
single space
character by UTF-8 hex code taken from "capture group"
This is to be executed in Visual/command mode and works over selected line range.

vim - surround text with function call

I want to wrap some code :
myObj.text;
with a function call where the code is passed as an argument.
console.log(myObj.text);
I've thought about using surround.vim to do that but didn't manage to do it.
Any idea if it's possible ? I
With Surround in normal mode:
ysiwfconsole.log<CR>
With Surround in visual mode:
Sfconsole.log<CR>
Without Surround in normal mode:
ciwconsole.log(<C-r>")<Esc>
Without Surround in visual mode:
cconsole.log(<C-r>")<Esc>
But that's not very scalable. A mapping would certainly be more useful since you will almost certainly need to do it often:
xnoremap <key> cconsole.log(<C-r>")<Esc>
nnoremap <key> ciwconsole.log(<C-r>")<Esc>
which brings us back to Surround, which already does that—and more—very elegantly.
I know and use two different ways to accomplish this:
Variant 1:
Select the text you want to wrap in visual mode (hit v followed by whatever movements are appropriate).
Replace that text by hitting c, then type your function call console.log(). (The old text is not gone, it's just moved into a register, from where it will be promptly retrieved in step 3.) Hit <esc> while you are behind the closing parenthese, that should leave you on the ) character.
Paste the replaced text into the parentheses by hitting P (this inserts before the character you are currently on, so right between the ( and the )).
The entire sequence is v<movement>c<functionName>()<esc>P.
Variant 2:
Alternatively to leaving insert mode and pasting from normal mode, you can just as well paste directly from insertion mode by hitting <ctrl>R followed by ".
The entire sequence is v<movement>c<functionName>(<ctrl>R")<esc>.
You can use substitution instruction combined with visual mode
To change bar to foo(bar):
press v and select text you want (plus one more character) to surround with function call (^v$ will select whole text on current line including the newline character at the end)
type :s/\%V.*\%V/foo\(&\)/<CR>
Explanation:
s/a/b/g means 'substitute first match of a with b on current line'
\%V.*\%V matches visual selection without last character
& means 'matched text' (bar in this case)
foo\(&\) gives 'matched text surrounded with foo(...) '
<CR> means 'press enter'
Notes
For this to work you have to visually select also next character after bar (^v$ selects also the newline character at the end, so it's fine)
might be some problems with multiline selections, haven't checked it yet
when I press : in visual mode, it puts '<,'> in command line, but that doesn't interfere with rest of the command (it even prevents substitution, when selected text appears also somewhere earlier on current line) - :'<,'>s/... still works

How to substitute for matching delimiters in vi?

I have some text which has matched delimiters (in this case, curly braces, and the text happens to be LaTeX, which is only incidental):
\nb{\vec{n},\vec{y}} \in \vec{z}
What I'd like to do is globally replace \nb{...} with (...), while respecting the nesting of delimiters. I.e., the result should be
(\vec{n},\vec{y}) \in \vec{z}
and not
(\vec{n},\vec{y}} \in \vec{z)
which is what would be produced by :%s/\\nb{\(.*\)}/(\1)/g. Standard regular expressions can't handle matched delimiters, so I wasn't expecting this way to work. Is there some vi-specific trick I can use to do this?
If you have surround.vim installed then the following should do the trick
:set nowrapscan
:let #q="/\\m\\\\nb{/e+1\<cr>cs{)dF\\#q"
gg#q
If you do not:
:set nowrapscan
let #q="/\\m\\\\nb{<cr>dt{yi{\"_ca{()\<esc>\"0P#q"
gg#q
Overview
Create a recursive macro that searches for \nb{, positions the cursor just inside the {, replace the }{'s with ()'s.
Glory of Details
:set nowrapscan this prevents searches from looping back around the file.
:let #q="..." store our macro inside the q register
/\m\nb{/e+1 searches for \nb{ and positions the cursor after the {
cs{) the surround version will just change the surrounding { with )
#q run the macro again
Used " so must escape a few things so they work correctly.
gg#q go to the top of the file and execute the macro in register q
The non surround version varies a bit here
yi{ copy the text inside {'s
"_ca{()<esc> change the text inside and including the {'s and replace with ()
"0P paste what we just copied inside the ()
I would use the following :global command.
:g/\\nb{/norm!/^M%r)[{r(dF\\
Type ^M as Ctrl+V, Enter.

Delete lines with highlighted text / delete highlighted text

Does anyone know how to delete:
lines with highlighted text
all highlighted text self
(highlighted text (p.e. after a search) not selected text)
Is there a command which search all highlighted text and delete the line?
(independent which search command or function I used to highlight text)
the g/pattern/d command does not always delete the highlighted text
p.e. /^\(.*\)\(\n\1\)\+$ --> highlight all double lines
but g/^\(.*\)\(\n\1\)\+$/d --> does NOT delete all double lines
Well, you can delete the searched pattern this way:
:%s/<pattern>//gc
And you can delete the whole line with the searched pattern this way:
:g/<pattern>/d
In addition to sixfeetsix' answer:
to delete all lines NOT containing <pattern>, type :g!/<pattern>/d or :v/<pattern>/g
to avoid having to type <pattern> after :g/, type :g/CTRL-r//d which inserts the content of the search register (CTRL-r/ means register /) into your command being typed.
how to delete: 2) all highlighted text self
You could use search-and-replace (substitute) to do this.
It is generally used like this:
:%s/your_search_here/your_replacement_here/gc
More specifically, replace your search results with nothing (to remove them):
:%s/your_search_here//gc
Omit the c at the end to replace all without confirmation.
Type :help :s for more info.
how to delete: 1) lines with highlighted text
To delete whole lines, you could either do a substitute, and just match the whole line with a regular expression (%s/^.*your_search_here.*\n//g), or you could use the multiple repeats (multi-repeat) feature.
It is generally used like this:
:g/your_search_here/[cmd]
More specifically, combine it with the normal command you use to delete a line (d):
:g/your_search_here/d
Type :help :g for more info.
Tips:
An easy way to get your query right before doing your substitute is to do your search in command mode rather than the default mode.
Instead of:
/your_search_here
Type:
:/your_search_here
Then you can go to command mode (:), hit the up key to bring up your last search, and edit the line to convert it to a substitute.
From this SuperUser answer:
You can use gn in version 7.4 onwards (and gN to go backwards). It replaces the v//e trick.
Search forward for the last used search pattern, like with `n`, and start Visual mode to select the match.
See :help gn or this Vimcast for more information.
I guess it's the essentially the same question as this:
Vim: when matching string across multiple lines using \_. in regex, yank command only works for the first line
It looks like a bug in Vim.

Vim: how to make the text I've just typed uppercase?

Use case: I've just entered insert mode, and typed some text. Now I want to make it uppercase.
It can be done via gUmotion. However, I can't find the motion over the text entered in the recent input session. It's somewhat strange and the concept of such motion is buggy (where to move if you've deleted text, for example?), but it may solve my problem.
Or, are there other ways of making uppercase the text you've recently inputted?
The motion you're looking for is:
`[
(backtick, open-square-bracket). To do a simple motion, you'd use:
gU`[
However, you'll find that the last character probably won't be included due to the way the motion works (I could be wrong). A simple solution would then be to do:
v`[U
Which is to say "go to visual mode, select from the current position to the start of the last changed text, make it upper case". For more information, see:
:help '[
:help mark-motions
Note the difference in :help mark-motions between a backtick and a single-quote.
Type the word in the lower case in the
vim.
Then press Esc key.
Then move the cursor to starting
character of the typed words.
Then press the ~ key.
It will replace the lower case to
upper case.
If the input is upper case it will
replace the lower case.
You can also use the "inner word" motion along with gU
After typing a word press <Esc> and type gUiw. This should work without having to switch to visual mode.
I simply select the text in visual mode and use ~ to change the case, U to uppercase or u to lowercase the selected text.
Edit: See comments below.
Sublime Text Vintage Mode
For those using Vintage Mode in Sublime Text.
Uppercase: g U
Lowercase: g u
Swap case: g ~
More info here.

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