Editing multiple lines of same parameter - vim

Question

I'm working with a large dataset and multiple lines need change on a certain parameter. Something like this for example:
funct(35, circle, square, triangle);
funct(42, sphere, cube, prism);
funct(74, disc, rhombus, rectangle);
needs to become:
funct(35, circle, my_square, other_triangle);
funct(42, sphere, my_cube, other_prism);
funct(74, disc, my_rhombus, other_rectangle);
How could I go about doing this?

Answer 1

An additional vim approach. Visually select all of the lines you would like to change, and then type this:
:norm 2Wimy_<C-v><esc>Wiother_
Note that <C-v> and <esc> are ctrl-v and esc, not text. Or, if you want to do this on every line, do this:
:%norm 2Wimy_<C-v><esc>Wiother_
You could also do this on lines in a certain range. For example, lines 3-100:
:3,100norm 2Wimy_<C-v><esc>Wiother_

Answer 2

I'll speak about emacs because I just love emacs !
to enter commands in the prompt : Alt + x
For small datasets
You can install the multiple-cursors package. It's like the Ctrl+D in SublimeText. Here is the doc.
For big datasets with some controls
You can use built-in package query-replace. It will replace the string/regex you want with another. Documentation.
The advantage of this one is that you can choose if you want to replace or not each occurence.
For big datasets without control
The built-in packages replace-string and replace-regexp will replace the pattern of your choice with a string or another pattern.
replace-regexp
replace-string
If you just want to rename some variables, multiples-cursors, replace-string and query-replace are fine.
If you want to replace patterns in huge datasets, replace-regexp is fun, but nothing's better than a script (bash, js, python ...).
There are amazing books about sed and awk bash commands (sed & awk, 2nd Edition)

Answer 3

With Vim:
:%s/\vfunct\(([^,]+,\s*){2}\zs/my_/
The 2 above is the number of arguments you want to skip.
The catch: this breaks if some parameters are themselves function calls. There are plugins that allows you to cope with that situation.

Answer 4

Using vim's regex engine:
:%s/\v(%(\s*\w+,){PARAMETER_NUMBER})(\s+)(\w+)/\1\2NEW_PREFIX\3
Substitute PARAMETER_NUMBER with the index (starting from 0) of the parameter you'd like to change and NEW_PREFIX with the prefix you'd like to add to it.
For instance, running:
:%s/\v(%(\s*\w+,){2})(\s+)(\w+)/\1\2my_\3
Changes your example code into:
funct(35, circle, my_square, triangle);
funct(42, sphere, my_cube, prism);
funct(74, disc, my_rhombus, rectangle);
You can modify this to customize it in other ways by changing the order of the backreferences (the \1, \2 and \3) at the end of the command. \1 refers to the parameters before the one you're changing, \2 refers to the whitespace just before the parameter you're changing and \3 to the parameter itself.

Answer 5

I'm aware of multiple-cursors, and they look really cool, but I've been to lazy to learn them. Here's a solution using only Emacs built ins.
(defun align-regexp-comma (beginning end)
"Align columns using comma as a delimiter."
(interactive "*r")
(align-regexp beginning end
",\\(\\s-*\\)" 1 1 t))
(global-set-key (kbd "C-<return>") 'cua-rectangle-mark-mode)
Then select the region you of interest, do M-x align-regexp-comma, which should align the arguments, then you can use C-<return> to start the rectangle mark, which lets you edit several lines at once. If you then want to remove the aligning spaces, use query-regexp-replace (M-%) with ", +" -> ", ".