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What is a good way to automate substitute commands in vim?
Suppose I have something like:
s/foo/bar/g
except much more complex and I want to run it on selected ranges without
having to type the substitute command?
How can I save the substitute command and give it short convenient name that I can invoke it by?
You can create a function with range supported, and in the function do the substitution. Also create a custom command to call the function with range.
However the easiest way I think, is creating an abbrev in your vimrc file:
cab RR s/foo/bar/g
thus, when you selected lines, or in command line gave ranges (like 3,5 or % ...) you press RR<space> the s/foo/bar/g will be filled automatically. You can do some adjustment or just press enter let it go.
You could try mapping below pressing the space key twice on a particular word will autofill the substitute command with the word under the cursor and wait for you to enter the replacement name
" super quick search and replace
nnoremap <Space><Space> :'{,'}s/\<<C-r>=expand('<cword>')<CR>\>/
nnoremap <Space>% :%s/\<<C-r>=expand('<cword>')<CR>\>/
in your case just put the cursor on the foo word and press the space bar twice.
You should see
:'{,'}s/\<foo\>/
Then type the word bar
'{,'}s/\<foo\>/bar
all occurrences of foo will be replaced by bar
Sometimes I want to edit a certain visual block of text across multiple lines.
For example, I would take a text that looks like this:
name
comment
phone
email
And make it look like this
vendor_name
vendor_comment
vendor_phone
vendor_email
Currently the way I would do it now is...
Select all 4 row lines of a block by pressing V and then j four times.
Indent with >.
Go back one letter with h.
Go to block visual mode with Ctrlv.
Select down four rows by pressing j four times. At this point you have selected a 4x1 visual blocks of whitespace (four rows and one column).
Press C. Notice this pretty much indented to the left by one column.
Type out a " vendor_" without the quote. Notice the extra space we had to put back.
Press Esc. This is one of the very few times I use Esc to get out of insert mode. Ctrlc would only edit the first line.
Repeat step 1.
Indent the other way with <.
I don't need to indent if there is at least one column of whitespace before the words. I wouldn't need the whitespace if I didn't have to clear the visual block with c.
But if I have to clear, then is there a way to do what I performed above without creating the needed whitespace with indentation?
Also why does editing multiple lines at once only work by exiting out of insert mode with Esc over Ctrlc?
Here is a more complicated example:
name = models.CharField( max_length = 135 )
comment = models.TextField( blank = True )
phone = models.CharField( max_length = 135, blank = True )
email = models.EmailField( blank = True )
to
name = models.whatever.CharField( max_length = 135 )
comment = models.whatever.TextField( blank = True )
phone = models.whatever.CharField( max_length = 135, blank = True )
email = models.whatever.EmailField( blank = True )
In this example I would perform the vertical visual block over the ., and then reinsert it back during insert mode, i.e., type .whatever.. Hopefully now you can see the drawback to this method. I am limited to only selecting a column of text that are all the same in a vertical position.
Move the cursor to the n in name.
Enter visual block mode (Ctrlv).
Press j three times (or 3j) to jump down by 3 lines; G (capital g) to jump to the last line
Press I (capital i).
Type in vendor_. Note: It will only update the screen in the first line - until Esc is pressed (6.), at which point all lines will be updated.
Press Esc.
An uppercase I must be used rather than a lowercase i, because the lowercase i is interpreted as the start of a text object, which is rather useful on its own, e.g. for selecting inside a tag block (it):
Another approach is to use the . (dot) command in combination with i.
Move the cursor where you want to start
Press i
Type in the prefix you want (e.g. vendor_)
Press esc.
Press j to go down a line
Type . to repeat the last edit, automatically inserting the prefix again
Alternate quickly between j and .
I find this technique is often faster than the visual block mode for small numbers of additions and has the added benefit that if you don't need to insert the text on every single line in a range you can easily skip them by pressing extra j's.
Note that for large number of contiguous additions, the block approach or macro will likely be superior.
Select the lines you want to modify using CtrlV.
Press:
I: Insert before what's selected.
A: Append after what's selected.
c: Replace what's selected.
Type the new text.
Press Esc to apply the changes to all selected lines.
I would use a macro to record my actions and would then repeat it.
Put your cursor on the first letter in name.
Hit qq to start recording into the q buffer.
Hit i to go into insert mode, type vector_, and then hit Esc to leave insert mode.
Now hit 0 to go back to the beginning of the line.
Now hit j to go down.
Now hit q again to stop recording.
You now have a nice macro.
Type 3#q to execute your macro three times to do the rest of the lines.
:%s/^/vendor_/
or am I missing something?
Updated January 2016
Whilst the accepted answer is a great solution, this is actually slightly fewer keystrokes, and scales better - based in principle on the accepted answer.
Move the cursor to the n in name.
Enter visual block mode (ctrlv).
Press 3j
Press I.
Type in vendor_.
Press esc.
Note, this has fewer keystrokes than the accepted answer provided (compare Step 3). We just count the number of j actions to perform.
If you have line numbers enabled (as illustrated above), and know the line number you wish to move to, then step 3 can be changed to #G where # is the wanted line number.
In our example above, this would be 4G. However when dealing with just a few line numbers an explicit count works well.
An alternative that can be more flexible:
Example: To enter the text XYZ at the beginning of the line
:%norm IXYZ
What's happening here?
% == Execute on every line
norm == Execute the following keys in normal mode (short for normal)
I == Insert at beginning of line
XYZ == The text you want to enter
Then you hit Enter, and it executes.
Specific to your request:
:%norm Ivendor_
You can also choose a particular range:
:2,4norm Ivendor_
Or execute over a selected visual range:
:'<,'>norm Ivendor_
Or execute for each line that matches a 'target' regex:
:%g/target/norm Ivendor_
I wanted to comment out a lot of lines in some config file on a server that only had vi (no nano), so visual method was cumbersome as well
Here's how i did that.
Open file vi file
Display line numbers :set number! or :set number
Then use the line numbers to replace start-of-line with "#", how?
:35,77s/^/#/
Note: the numbers are inclusive, lines from 35 to 77, both included will be modified.
To uncomment/undo that, simply use :35,77s/^#//
If you want to add a text word as a comment after every line of code, you can also use:
:35,77s/$/#test/ (for languages like Python)
:35,77s/;$/;\/\/test/ (for languages like Java)
credits/references:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/84929/uncommenting-multiple-lines-of-code-specified-by-line-numbers-using-vi-or-vim
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/120615/how-to-comment-multiple-lines-at-once
You might also have a use case where you want to delete a block of text and replace it.
Like this
Hello World
Hello World
To
Hello Cool
Hello Cool
You can just visual block select "World" in both lines.
Type c for change - now you will be in insert mode.
Insert the stuff you want and hit escape.
Both get reflected vertically. It works just like 'I', except that it replaces the block with the new text instead of inserting it.
Suppose you have this file:
something
name
comment
phone
email
something else
and more ...
You want to add "vendor_" in front of "name", "comment", "phone", and "email", regardless of where they appear in the file.
:%s/\<\(name\|comment\|phone\|email\)\>/vendor_\1/gc
The c flag will prompt you for confirmation. You can drop that if you don't want the prompt.
Use Ctrl+V to enter visual block mode
Move Up/Down to select the columns of text in the lines you want to comment.
Then hit Shift+i and type the text you want to insert.
Then hit Esc, wait 1 second and the inserted text will appear on every line
Ctrl + v to go to visual block mode
Select the lines using the up and down arrow
Enter lowercase 3i (press lowercase I three times)
I (press capital I. That will take you into insert mode.)
Write the text you want to add
Esc
Press the down arrow
I came here to paste in many lines an already copied string. When copy with y we can paste, in the INSERT MODE, pressing Ctrl+r and right after press ''. This will have the same result as being in NORMAL MODE and press p. This is called paste from registry.
Suppose the following text in the buffer:
vendor_something
text
to_receive
the_paste
pattern
Then we can put the cursor pointing to v in vendor_ and press v, move to right using l until select the underscore symbol we want to paste in the text bellow. After that, we can point the cursor at the beginning of "text" (two lines bellow vendor_something) and press Ctrl+v. Then I to go into INSERT MODE where we press 3j Ctrl+r '' Esc. The result of this sequence will be:
vendor_something
vendor_text
vendor_to_receive
vendor_the_paste
vendor_pattern
:.,+3s/^/vendor_/
Another example, I needed to just add two spaces to a block of 125 lines, so I used (with cursor positioned at the beginning of the first line of the block):
:.,+125s/^/ /
Worked great.
If the change is required in the entire file,
:1,$s/^/vendor_/
If the change is required for only a few lines,
Go to the first line where change is required, and either give the command
:.,ns/^/vendor_/
Substitute n with the line number of the last line in the block.
Or,
:.,+ns/^/vendor_/
Substitute n with number of lines minus 1 in which the change is required.
I'm running vim 7.3 on a Mac 10.7.2 and I'm having some trouble cutting and pasting several lines.
On my old Linux setup (which was stolen so I don't know versions), I could type "dd" multiple times and then "p" would yank all of them back. For example: type: "dd dd" and two lines would be deleted. Now type "p" and both lines are pasted back into the buffer.
I know I can accomplish what I want by typing "2dd", and then "p" - but I would like to be able to "dd"-out lines without counting the number of lines ahead of time.
Any ideas?
Have you considered using visual mode?
You could just go:
Press V
Select everything you want to cut without counting
Press d
Go to where you want to paste
Press p
This should yield approximately half as many keystrokes as the dd method since you press one key per line rather than two. Bonus points if you use 5j (or similar) to select multiple lines at a time.
You could type:
d<n>d
where <n> is the number of lines that you want to cut, and then you could paste them with:
p
For example, to cut and paste 3 lines:
d3d
p
To cut and paste by line numbers (do :set number to see the line numbers), for lines x to y do:
:x,yd
or if your cursor is already on line x, do
:,yd
Then go to where you want to paste and press p
Not sure if this is close enough to what you're trying, but one thing you could do is use a specific register, and capitalize your register name. That tells vim to append to the register rather than replace it, so if you have the lines:
one
two
three
you can enter
"qdd
"Qdd
"Qdd
and then subsequently if you enter
"qp
it will paste back the original lines
To copy and paste 4 lines:
y4y (with the cursor on the starting line you wanna copy)
p (with cursor on the line you wanna paste after)
I agree with #Ben S. that this is the preferred way to accomplish this but if you are just looking to replicate your old behavior you can remap dd to append to a specified register, and then map p to paste from that register and clear it.
This will have the disadvantage of causing p to only work with things deleted using dd (using d} to delete to the end of the paragraph would not put the text in the correct register to be pasted later).
Add the following to your vimrc
noremap dd "Ddd "Appends the contents of the current line into register d
noremap p "dp:let #d=""<CR> "Pastes from register d and then clears it out
if you don't want pasting to clear out the contents of the register
noremap p "dp "Paste from register d
but this will cause that register to grow without ever clearing it out
Often times it seems I have a list of items, and I need to add numbers in front of them. For example:
Item one
Item two
Item three
Which should be:
1. Item one
2. Item two
3. Item three
In vim, I can press I in edit mode, insert "1.", hit escape. Then I go to the next line, press ., and then ^A to increment the number. This seems hugely inefficient... how would I make a macro so that I can go to the next line, and insert a number at the beginning which is one greater than the line before?
You can easily record a macro to do it.
First insert 1. at the start of the first line (there are a couple of spaces after the 1. but you can't see them).
Go to the start of the second line and go into record mode with qa.
Press the following key sequence:
i # insert mode
<ctrl-Y><ctrl-Y><ctrl-Y> # copy the first few characters from the line above
<ESC> # back to normal mode
| # go back to the start of the line
<ctrl-A> # increment the number
j # down to the next line
q # stop recording
Now you can play back the recording with #a (the first time; for subsequent times, you can do ## to repeat the last-executed macro) and it will add a new incremented number to the start of each line.
Select your lines in visual mode with: V, then type:
:'<,'>s/^\s*\zs/\=(line('.') - line("'<")+1).'. '
Which is easy to put in a command:
command! -nargs=0 -range=% Number <line1>,<line2>s/^\s*\zs/\=(line('.') - <line1>+1).'. '
Here's an easy way, without recording a macro:
Make a blockwise, visual selection on the first character of each list item:
^<C-V>2j
Insert a 0. at the beginning of these lines:
I0. <Esc>
Re-select the visual selection (which is now all of the 0s) with gv and increment them as a sequence g<C-A>:
gvg<C-A>
The entire sequence: ^<C-V>2jI0. <Esc>gvg<C-A>.
A recording of the process in action.
There are also some plugins for doing this type of work if you have to do it on occasion:
http://vim.sourceforge.net/scripts/script.php?script_id=670
You can use the 'record' feature.
It is an easy way to record macros in Vim.
See :help record
In normal mode 'qa' to start recording what you type in the 'a' register
Type the necessary command to insert a number at the beginning of line, copy it to next line and use CTRL-A to increase its value.
'q' to end the recording
then '#a' to replay the macro stored in register 'a'
('##' repeat the last macro).
And you can do things like '20#a' to do it twenty times in a row.
It is pretty handy to repeat text modification.
Depending of the cases, it is easier or harder to use than a regexp.
Maybe it's not a macro solution, but at least it's easy.
add numbers to all lines
It's possible to use :%!nl -ba or :%!cat -n commands which will add line numbers to all the lines.
On Windows, you've to have Cygwin/MSYS/SUA installed.
add numbers to selected lines
To add numbers only for selected lines, please select them in visual mode (v and cursors), then when finished - execute the command: :%!nl (ignore blank lines) or :%!cat -n (blank lines included).
formatting
To remove extra spaces, select them in visual block (Ctrl+v) and remove them (x).
To add some characters (., :, )) after the numbers, select them in visual block (Ctrl+v), then append the character (A, type the character, then finish with Esc).
Insert a number at the start of the block of text eg.
1. Item One
Enter the vim normal mode command as follows:
qb^yW+P^<Ctrl-A>q
This means:
qb # start recording macro 'b'
^ # move to start of text on the line
yW # 'yank' or copy a word including the ending whitespace.
+ # move one line down to the start of the next line
P # place text ahead of the cursor
^ # move to start of text
<Ctrl-A> # increment text
q # Finish recording macro
What this allows you to do is replay the macro across the last line of numbered list as many times as needed.
It is some time later and I think it is time to upgrade this answer, at least for neovim users.
Here I wrote a lua function you can bind to Enter and it will work on any imaginable type of list, such as
1. foo
1.99-> bar
and after pressing enter, this line will be added:
1.100->
all using this function
vim.api.nvim_set_keymap('i','<Enter>','v:lua.enter_or_list()', {expr = true})
function _G.enter_or_list()
local line = vim.api.nvim_buf_get_lines(0, vim.fn.line('.') - 1, -1, false)[1]:match('^%s*[^%a%s]+')
if not line then
return '\r'
else
local start, finish = line:find('[^%a%s]*%d')
local main = line:sub(start,finish)
local suffix = line:sub(finish+1)
return table.concat({
'\r',
main,
vim.api.nvim_replace_termcodes('<Esc><C-a>a', true, true, true),
suffix,
' '
})
end
end
for vim users, I have a little simpler, but a little less capable keybinding:
imap <silent> <S-Enter> <CR><Esc>kk<End>Ev<Home>yjpk<End>e<C-a><End>a<Space>
I hope this will be useful to other people as well, as it is very convenient.
Cheers
I'm aware that in Vim I can often repeat a command by simply adding a number in front of it. For example, one can delete 5 lines by:
5dd
It's also often possible to specify a range of lines to apply a command to, for example
:10,20s:hello:goodbye:gc
How can I perform a 'vertical edit'? I'd like to, for example, insert a particular symbol, say a comma, at the beggining (skipping whitespace, i.e. what you'd get if you type a comma after Shift-I in command mode) of every line in a given range. How can this be achieved (without resorting to down-period-down-period-down-period)?
Ctrl-v enters visual mode blockwise. You can then move (hjkl-wise, as normal), and if you want to insert something on multiple lines, use Shift-i.
So for the text:
abc123abc
def456def
ghi789ghi
if you hit Ctrl-v with your cursor over the 1, hit j twice to go down two columns, then Shift-i,ESC , your text would look like this:
abc,123abc
def,456def
ghi,789ghi
(the multi-line insert has a little lag, and won't render until AFTER you hit ESC).
:10,20s/^/,/
Or use a macro, record with:
q a i , ESC j h q
use with:
# a
Explanation: q a starts recording a macro to register a, q ends recording. There are registers a to z available for this.
That's what the :norm(al) command is for:
:10,20 normal I,
If you are already using the '.' to repeat your last command a lot, then I found this to be the most convenient solution so far. It allows you to repeat your last command on each line of a visual block by using
" allow the . to execute once for each line of a visual selection
vnoremap . :normal .<CR>
I believe the easiest way to do this is
1) record a macro for one line, call it 'a'; in this case one types
q a I , ESC j q
2) select the block of lines that you want to apply the macro to
3) use the 'norm' function to execute macro 'a' over this block of lines, i.e.,
:'<,'>norm#a
I think the easiest is to record a macro, and then repeat the macro as many times as you want. For example to add a comma at the start of every line, you type:
q a I , ESC j q
to repeat that 5 times, you enter
5 # a
With your edit already saved in the . operator, do the following:
Select text you want to apply the operator to using visual mode
Then run the command :norm .
Apart from the macros, as already answered, for the specific case of inserting a comma in a range of lines (say from line 10 to 20), you might do something like:
:10,20s/\(.*\)/,\1
That is, you can create a numbered group match with \( and \), and use \1 in the replacement string to say "replace with the contents of the match".
I use block visual mode. This allows you to perform inserts/edits across multiple lines (aka 'vertical edits').