vim - Prefix number to 3 letter combination bdw - vim

I am learning Vim and I have come across this situation.
Hello, World!
-
I want to delete Hello, World. If I entered bdw (go to beginning of word, delete word) three times then it would delete it. However, I want to type 3bdwto save typing, but it goes three words back and deletes that word, leaving me with , World!. Is there any way to prefix a number to a three letter command or is there another command I should be looking at?

Move the cursor under !, then press
dFH (delete back until first H)
F=Shift+f

Is there any way to prefix a number to a three letter command or is there another command I should be looking at?
The problem is that it's not a 3-letter command, it's two seperate commands.
3b 3dw will do what you want, but it does require the extra 3.
EDIT: Years later... I notice a small optimization to this case w3db. The only small issue is that you need that leading w to correct the cursor position.

Hello, World!
Go to the beginning of line (by pressing 0) and type the following:
dt!
Explanation:
d delete
t until the character before ! in the line.

Move the cursor under the ! ($ or l)
Then write d0 (which means delete til beginning of line)
You can also do 0 (go to beginning of line) then dt! (delete until next !)

Related

How to select the similar text in gvim and modify them?

How I can select all the text start with foo_list starting from line 4 (see. below code) and rename them with list_values or any other preferred name ? Please note, I don't want to change in the first line.
Thanks in advance !
foo_list = [5, 2, 3, 1, 4]
def reverse_list_1():
foo_list=[0,10,20,40]
for i in reversed(foo_list):
print i,
foo_list=[0,10,20,40]
print foo_list[::-1]
for i in reversed(foo_list):
print i,
length = len(foo_list)
for i in range(length):
print foo_list[length-i-1],
Preferable solution: key map in the .vimrc or .gvimrc file, don't want to use any plugin.
That's a job for :substitute. You can specify the range with explicit line numbers (here: 4 to end of buffer $, or maybe next empty line /^$/):
:4,$substitute/\<foo_list\>/list_values/g
You can also first move to the first line and use the .,$ range.
Since that's still a lot of typing, you can pull in the current word (assuming you first position the cursor on the foo_list occurrence in line 4) into the command line via <C-R><C-W>.
Or, for a plugin solution, my ChangeGlobally plugin provides a mapping that avoids the use of :s.
:%s/foo_list/list_values/gc
This command says to replace the word foo_list with list_values in the whole document, asking for confirmation each time. Then for the first occurrence of foo_list on line 1, press n (to indicate NO) , and press y (to indicate YES) for all further occurrences to replace them. This solution works when you have to replace a few words. You can read the command as follows:
In the whole document (%), substitute (s) the word foo_list with list_values and do this globally (g), asking for confirmation (c) each time. For more options in the substitute command type :help :s in vim.
Solution 2 :
When there are thousands of words to replace, you surely don't want to type a y/n confirmation each time (which is enabled by the c flag in the end in the above command).
Take your cursor to line 4 and run
:.,$s/foo_list/list_values/g
Read the above command as from here (.) to the end of file (,$)
replace (s) the word foo_list with list_values
globally (g).
For small changes like this I like to use the gn motion. The gn motion visually selects the current search pattern. This makes for a powerful search/replace method when combining the gn motion with the change, c, operator and the repeat command, ..
Basic steps:
Make foo_list your search pattern. e.g. /foo_list or via *
Use c and gn to change the first foo_list. e.g. cgnbar_list<esc>
Now repeat that change on the next search result via .
Use n to advance to the next search results. (Hit n twice to skip an occurrence)
Keep using n and . until done
There is a nice Vimcasts episode on this topic: Operating on search matches using gn
For more information see:
:h gn
:substitute is the 'correct' way, but if you're only making a few changes, and you are not very experienced with ex commands, sometimes it takes longer to think through the command than to bounce through the list of changes you want to make using motions.
If you start with your cursor on the first instance of foo_list, hit '*' to jump to the next occurrence in the file. Hit 'ce' to delete to the end of the word and enter insert mode. Type in your new variable name and return to normal mode. Now you can jump through the rest of the file using 'n' to jump to the next occurrence (or 'N' to go back), and '.' to repeat your last edit action.

Vim - Delete til last occurrence of character in line

I'm trying to figure out how to dt or df the last occurrence of a character in a string.
For example, let's say I have the following line:
foo not.relevant.text.bar
If I f df. I expectedly get foo relevant.text.bar but I would like to get foo bar. Using f 3df. is not an option as I don't know how many of that character will be in the string. Additionally, I may want to get foo .bar (f 3dt.), or if the line ends with a dot, I may want to get foo .. I want to always find the last one regardless of how many there are.
Is this possible without a regex? I suppose I could use a regex but I was hoping there was a simple vim command that I'm missing. I find myself trying to do something like this often.
one way without using regex, without counting "dot" (could be other letters)... see if others have better way..
foo[I]not.relevant.text.bar ([I] is cursor)
you could try:
lmm$T.d`m
or in this format, may look better?
lmm$T.d`m
this will do the job. you could create a mapping if you use that often.
EDIT
I add a GIF animation to show it works. :)
note
I typed #= in normal mode after moving my cursor to the right starting point (by f(space)), to display the keys I pressed in command line.
You can use my JumpToLastOccurrence plugin. It provides ,f / ,F / ,t / ,T commands that do just that.
I would use f df...
It is not necessarily shorter to type, but I find it easier to use "repeat last command" than counting in advance the number of word/sentence I want to delete.
Then you can adjust the number of . you type to adjust the length of the string you want to delete.
For your example: ET.dB
foo not.relevant.text.bar
And it works, as long as the cursor is anywhere within the text following "foo".
Strip Path from Path+Filename: ET/dB
I use it for stripping a pathname of all but the trailing filename.
Strip the path from /some/long/path/filename.ext leaving only the filename.
Just as long as:
The cursor is anywhere within the bold word
There are no spaces in that word
E Go to the end (since there are no spaces - also works if not the last thing on the line)
T/ Find the last / (stop just after it, so it will be deleted, as well)
dB Delete to the beginning of the word
In visual mode:
$F.d^
The $ goes to the end of the current line, F searches backward for a period and d^ deletes till the beginning of the line.

VIM: How to delete 3 words from the end of line in normal mode?

What is the shortest combo?
P.S. I usually do ACtrl+wCtrl+wCtrl+wEsc.
In other words, I have to jump into Insert mode.
P.P.S. d3b doesn't work.
This sequence of commands,
$3bD
is the shortest way to do it I can think of at the moment but it leaves out an ugly trailing space.
$3gelD
is another way that gets rid of the trailing space.
You can also think outside the box and play with spaces instead of words:
$3F D
$ 3b D which translates to
$ to the end of a line
3 three of whatever is next
b backward three [one without modifier] words
D delete the characters under the cursor until the end of the line
In addition, you can also use the normal command in ex mode to achieve the same
:norm! $3bD
$3bD
Or
$3bDx
...if you also want to delete the trailing space.
Go to the end of the line, go back 3 words, then delete to the end of the line: $ 3b D
or
Go to the end of the line, delete back 3 words, then delete the extra character: $ 3db x
As others have mentioned, $3bD is the shortest, and $3bDx will suffice to remove the remaining whitespace, assuming it's exactly one space or tab.
In order to account for all whitespace, $3gelD can be used. This option has the benefit of cleaning up properly in most cases, but it fails when a line contains exactly 3 words because the 3ge motion jumps back to the previous line.
An alternative approach is based on daw. Since 3daw acts forward, either $daw.. or $3b3daw must be used. For 3 words, $daw.. is shorter and probably more desirable, but $3b3daw is more Vim-esque and can easily be extended to more words.
b, ge, and w can be replaced with B, gE, and W in order to remove WORDs instead of words.

Vim: substitution in a range that is less than a line

Let's say I have the following line of code:
something:somethingElse:anotherThing:woahYetAnotherThing
And I want to replace each : with a ; except the first one, such that the line looks like this:
something:somethingElse;anotherThing;woahYetAnotherThing
Is there a way to do this with the :[range]s/[search]/[replace]/[options] command without using the c option to confirm each replace operation?
As far as I can tell, the smallest range that s acts on is a single line. If this is true, then what is the fastest way to do the above task?
I'm fairly new to vim myself; I think you're right about range being lines-only (not 100% certain), but for this specific example you might try replacing all of the instances with a global flag, and then putting back the first one by omitting the global -- something like :s/:/;/g|s/;/:/.
Note: if the line contains a ; before the first : then this will not work.
Here you go...
:%s/\(:.*\):/\1;/|&|&|&|&
This is a simple regex substitute that takes care of one single not-the-first :.
The & command repeats the last substitute.
The | syntax separates multiple commands on one line. So, each substitute is repeated as many times as there are |& things.
Here is how you could use a single keystroke to do what you want (by mapping capital Q):
map Q :s/:/;/g\|:s/;/:<Enter>j
Every time you press Q the current line will be modified and the cursor will move to the next line.
In other words, you could just keep hitting Q multiple times to edit each successive line.
Explanation:
This will operate globally on the current line:
:s/:/;/g
This will switch the first semi-colon back to a colon:
:s/;/:
The answer by #AlliedEnvy combines these into one statement.
My map command assigns #AlliedEnvy's answer to the capital Q character.
Another approach (what I would probably do if I only had to do this once):
f:;r;;.
Then you can repeatedly press ;. until you reach the end of the line.
(Your choice to replace a semi-colon makes this somewhat comfusing)
Explanation:
f: - go to the first colon
; - go to the next colon (repeat in-line search)
r; - replace the current character with a semi-colon
; - repeat the last in-line search (again)
. - repeat the last command (replace current character with a semi-colon)
Long story short:
fx - moves to the next occurrence of x on the current line
; repeats the last inline search
While the other answers work well for this particular case, here's a more general solution:
Create a visual selection starting from the second element to the end of the line. Then, limit the substitution to the visual area by including \%V:
:'<,'>s/\%V:/;/g
Alternatively, you can use the vis.vim plugin
:'<,'>B s/:/;/g

Vim yanking range of lines

I'm a C# developer who has just recently decided to expand my knowledge of the tools available to me. The first tool I've decided to learn is Vi/Vim. Everything has been going well so far, but there are a couple of questions I can't seem to find the answer to:
Lets say I wanted to yank a range of lines. I know there are many ways of doing so, but I would like to do it by line number. I figured it would be similar to how the substitute commands work, something like 81,91y. Is there a way to do this?
I'm a little confused about the g command in normal mode. It seems to do a myriad of things and I can't really determine what the g command does at its core. I'm confused on whether or not it's a motion command or a kind of "catch all" for other commands ran through normal mode. Can someone please explain this or point me to a reference that gives a good explanation of the g command?
Yank lines 81-91
:81,91y<enter>
If your fingers don't like to find the : and , keys, this would work as well (go to line 81, yank 11 lines)
81gg11yy
My only use of g is 5gg. To go to the 5th line. 22gg: 22nd line. As jimbo said, it's really only a modifier for some other commands.
For completeness, (http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Power_of_g) explains a lot of how g works in command mode.
You can also copy the current lines to your present cursor location using 't'.
:81,91t.<enter>
This will paste the lines 81-91 under the line the cursor is on.
I learned this from http://vimcasts.org which is an excellent resource on VIM.
I also like to use vim's relative line number option which means I can just enter:
:-10,-7ya a
to yank the text into named buffer a.
N.B. Specifying A will append what you're yanking to the current contents of buffer a.
Don't forget you can also copy blocks of text and move blocks of text around as well with the similar commands:
:-10,-7co .
means copy the four lines of text 10 lines above to below the current line, and
:-10,-7mo .
means move the four lines of text 10 lines above to below the current line.
The G command goes to a certain line number, if it's accompanied by a count value. 81G puts you on line 81.
The y command can be combined with a movement, like G. So to yank everything until line 91 you can use y91G.
Together you get:
81Gy91G
Go to line 81, then yank while going to line 91.
g doesn't do anything by itself. It's one of a couple meta-commands that holds a bunch of sorta-unrelated commands.
z is yet another command like that.
In addition to :91,96y a which yanks (y) lines 91 through 96 into register a, (pasted with "ap), the yanked lines can be appended to the register with:
:91,96y A
I.e. the capitalization of the A register causes an appending operation into register a instead of an overwrite. Capitalization of the register always works like this, e.g. :let #A=';' appends a ; to register a.
Using plus (+) or minus (-) references lines relative to the current cursor position:
:-10,+10y b
I.e. it would yank(y) 21 lines around the current cursor position and put them in register b.
An absence of input actually represents the current cursor position as well, which means that this:
:-5,y a
would yank the text from 5 lines above to current cursor position into named buffer a, and:
:,+5y a
would yank the 5 lines after the current cursor position into buffer a.
Note: If you have a macro in buffer a it was just overwritten by the previous yank, as yank registers and macro registers are really the same thing. Which is why, coincidentally, you can paste a macro, edit it, and then yank it back into it's register. I personally use letters reached by my left hand for yanks, and letters reached by my right hand for macros.
Moving blocks of text around, looks like this:
:+10,+13m.
which means move the four lines positioned 10 lines ahead of current cursor, to below the current line.
Addendum
I previously confused ya in :91,95ya a to be somehow synonymous with ya{motion} where the motion was supplied by 91,95. This was incorrect and the "a" in ya is completely unnecessary. In my defense, my help yank does not convey that ya is a possible alias of yank.
The best solution would be to enter "visual mode", by pressing v. And after selecting lines just copy them by pressing y. Then paste copied lines by pressing p.
Vim's :help index describes g as:
|g| g{char} extended commands, see |g| below
Scroll down (or :help g) for a list.
As a long time Vi/Vim user I tend to use 'marks' instead of line numbers (or 'line markers'). It works like this: m is the 'mark' character; then use any letter to identify/name the mark. To return to a mark preface the named mark with a single quote ( 'a)These marks can be used as the range. Examples:
File:
<line 1>
<line 2>
<line 3>
<line 4>
<line 5>
When in command mode move cursor to line 2, typema. scroll to line 4, typemb.
To yank from mark a to mark b type:
:'a,'byank
To delete from mark a to mark b type:
:'a,'bdel
To search from mark a to mark b and replace 'ine' with 'ink':
:'a,'bs/ine/ink/g
To copy mark a through mark b and paste below the current position (the 'dot' always references the line where the cursor currently is positioned):
:'a,'bco .
Shift lines of code, between mark a through mark b, one tab to the right (use opposite chevron, <, to move left):
:'a,'b>
In command mode you can move back to marks by simply typing 'a to move back to the line marked a. Typing '' moves you back to previous position (unfortuantely only remembers the previous position, not two back).
You can yank to named buffers, copy, delete lines, search&replace just portions of your code, etc. without needing to know the line numbers.
To yank lines from line number 81 to 91 :
approach 1: 81gg11yy
not bad but you have to do little bit of math to find out how many lines to yank
approach 2: 81gg then shift+v then 91gg then y
BEST IN MY OPINION because this is straight forward, you only have to know the obvious thing i.e from which line number to which line number you want to yank

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