Summary
Is there a "find similar snippets" plugin is available for VIM, OR ALTERNATIVELY,
is there a plugin for vim which could easily be extended to do this efficiently?
Details
I realize this is a strange question to ask without context, so here is the context. I'm open to other solutions to the same problem if a "vim plugin" isn't ideal.
I generally do a lot of grepping when working on a new project. Is there a way inside of vim, that i can "grep" and display several snippets (the 2 lines above/below) for a particular string which im currently highlighting.
Clarification: For example, in this post, If i highlighted "inside of vim", I'd like to see (in the VIM window) the results of grep -r -B 2 -A 2 "inside of vim".
The hard part here is of course (1) the visualization pop up and (2) having the shortcut to type when text is selected, otherwise its easy to grep for this kind of thing in a separate terminal. I generally find "CTRL+N" is VERY useful largely because the 2nd dimension it adds for auto-completion, and im mostly looking for an extension of it which shows a glimpse of similar code snippets in other files of a directory.
You probably want the CtrlSF plugin. Try it, you'll be impressed.
On a side note, CtrlSF can make use of ack and ag. These are essentially improved versions of grep, tuned up for programming. Take a look at those too, they will change your programming life for the better.
There are also Ack and Ag plugins that can interface Vim with ack and ag directly, which work by putting the output of said programs in quickfix lists. However, CtrlSF does all that and much more.
Related
Above is default tabline, I want that instead of number of windows I ll see there index of tab, in the above example '1 quickfix.txt | 2 tabpage.txt' to simply call [index]gt to go to target page. Is it possible to acquire default string for tab, for example '2 quicklix.txt' then swap first digit with tabnumber to get '1 quickfix.txt'?
P.s.
I don't want to write scripts the way vim is suggesting, see :help tagline, in the sense, that there many features like cropping and showing if file is modified, which I like and don't want to write them from scratch. What I want is to get default string for tab and modify it the way I explained earlier.
P.s. I don't want to write scripts the way vim is suggesting, see :help tagline, in the sense, that there many features like cropping and showing if file is modified, which I like and don't want to write them from scratch.
As discussed earlier, your goal is impossible to achieve without at least a little bit of scripting.
You don't have to write anything "from scratch", though. The snippets generously provided to you under :help setting-tabline and :help setting-guitablabel cover a lot of ground so you only have to copy them to your vimrc and modify them to suit your needs.
I've got two c++ files that I want to diff with vimdiff. One of them has a lot more function definitions at the start, before both have a common function that I'm actually interested in. However, vimdiff seems incapable to ignore all the function defs before the common one (perhaps because of different arguments).
Is there any way I can give a hint to vimdiff that, say, line xxx in file1.cxx is equals to line yyy in file2.cxx?
I'm open for alternative solutions without vimdiff, but they must be on linux and very preferably command line, since I'm ssh-ing and any graphical interface is a bit uncomfortable.
Vim just delegates the actual work of comparing the files to the external diff utility, cp. :help diff-diffexpr. The help page also shows how a different utility can be used. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any more "intelligent" or configurable diff tool that would help in your situation.
A workaround might be (temporarily) removing the excess functions that you're not interested in, anyway. With the BlockDiff plugin, you don't actually need to modify the files. Just select the interesting lines in both windows and execute :[range]BlockDiff on them. Only those sections will then be diffed in a separate tab page. (The plugin mentions this requires a GUI, but Vim in a terminal supports tab pages just as well.)
This may be an odd question, but still. I use cat to display a file in bash (KDE Konsole),
cat foobar.rb
Now, I would like to use Vim to colourize that foobar.rb file according to what you would get when you start foobar.rb in Vim. Edit: But only for display purpose, on the terminal.
I am not sure this is possible, but I thought it would be neat if I could use Vim for that.
I really just want colourized keywords, and Vim has the perfect colour definitions.
So I thought combining this would be great.
Is this possible in Vim out of the box though?
One approach would be to use a library such as Pygments, which is a general purpose syntax highlighter. You could write a wrapper called ccat or something that would apply syntax highlighting to an input file and write to stdout.
If you want to page up and down in a highlighted file, you can use less with the -R switch, which passes control characters through to the terminal directly, preserving colours. So:
ccat file.rb | less -R
But at that point, you're pretty much at the capabilities of view.
I'm not sure if I understand your question correctly, but if you are only looking for a command that will give you a read-only view of the input file (like cat) but with coloured keywords, use view. view is an alternative way to start vim in read-only mode, so you have all syntax highlighting possibilities. From the vim man page:
view Start in read-only mode. You will be protected from writing
the files. Can also be done with the "-R" argument.
gvim gview
The GUI version. Starts a new window. Can also be done with
the "-g" argument.
evim eview
The GUI version in easy mode. Starts a new window. Can also
be done with the "-y" argument.
rvim rview rgvim rgview
Like the above, but with restrictions. It will not be possi-
ble to start shell commands, or suspend Vim. Can also be
done with the "-Z" argument.
I have always seen view on systems that have vim installed.
Closest is the less script that comes with vim:
cat myfile | vim -u /usr/share/vim/vim72/macros/less.vim -
Note the - argument to vim. You may need to change the vim72 to your version (and the whole path if you have it installed elsewhere)
Now, this isn't exactly what you want, because its behaviour is less-like, in that you have to press keys to make it scroll down or complete. However, they are briefer than usual vim. For example, space to scroll down; and q to quit (not :q).
You want a cat-like version; me too. But there doesn't seem to be one.
EDIT uh, there's also a vimpager project, that includes vimcat - exactly what you want. But it doesn't come with vim, and I haven't tried it yet.
vim.org: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1723
github: https://github.com/rkitover/vimpager
I am rather new to VIM. I got some source code and this is a mess. At a first sight I would like at least to get a clear and organised view of the code, so I like to get it rightly formatted, I mean indented depending on the depth of the functions and so.
I wonder if it can be done with VIM, and otherwise which other commandline tools for that can you recommend.
Thanks
While vim is a true Swiss-knife I still prefer external tools for some jobs. This approach is some times much more intuitive and easy to remember than using the built-in equivalent.
In the case of indenting, I filter the whole file buffer through astyle. The astyle parameters are much easier to grasp in a couple of minutes, especially if you are not a vim guru. Also astyle provides much more flexibility in fine-tuning the output.
First install astyle:# apt-get install astyle
Then inside vim:
:%!astyle (simple case - astyle default mode is C/C++)
or
:%!astyle --mode=c --style=ansi -s2 (ansi C++ style, use two spaces per indent level)
or
:1,40!astyle --mode=c --style=ansi (ansi C++ style, filter only lines 1-40)
you can do the following:
gg=G
I would highly recommend clang-format nowadays. It allows simple integration of clang-format into Vim, once you have clang-format installed:
http://clang.llvm.org/docs/ClangFormat.html#vim-integration
It is the only code beautifier that really understands your C++ code, and it is really intelligent to beautify the code more like a human being than a machine. E.g.:
void TestFunction(int argument1, int argument2,
int argument3);
void TestFunctionVeryLongName(int argument1,
int argument2,
int argument3);
void TestFunctionWithRidiculouslyLongName(
int argument1, int argument2, int argument3);
Vim will definitely do this, although the results may not be perfect:
First, select the entire file in visual mode: ggVG
Then hit = to reindent everything.
You can learn more about the equal command with: :help =
There is also a Vim plugin relying on clang-format: vim-clang-format
Then you can simply map the formatting command to whatever suits you.
There is a vim plugin that enables formatting on your code from within vim. It's called vim-autoformat and you can download it here:
https://github.com/vim-autoformat/vim-autoformat
It integrates external code-formatting programs into vim. For example, if you want to format C, C++, C# or Java code, you need to install the program astyle, and vim sets it as the format program automatically.
I don't write C++ code, but I write some Java code.
Instead, Vim supports the formatting of some common languages.
I have set up a short cut for me to format the whole code in the buffer.
It will return to the line I just edited :)
" format the file
map <leader>fm gg=G'.
A generic solution along the lines of m000's idea is to use UniversalIndentGUI as an external tool.
Just had to solve this exact problem, so I thought I'd contribute to save others some time.
You can use gg=G to indent your code. But things get hard to understand the moment you want to tweak how that auto-indenting happens. Therefore, if you only care that errant whitespace is removed and don't really care about formatting style, gg=G is the quickest way to go about it, because its built-in.
If you do want to control the style (for example, you're trying to make your code conform to a style guide), then you're going to need an external tool to process your file. You can invoke that tool from within vim with: :%!<toolname> <options>. This pipes the file through the tool and re-loads the processed result. (You can obviously use this for anything else you want to do to your file too)
So the next question is, what external tool should you choose? Regardless, the method is the same:
Install the tool of choice
Make sure its in your path
Add a line to your vimrc file that creates a shortcut key to use so you save time
Use it.
Now, which tool you use depends on the style you're trying to replicate. If you're trying to replicate a widely used style, then chances are astyle is all you need.
If you're trying to replicate a custom style, then you will need two things:
UniversalIndentGui - a front end that lets you play around with various options and live-preview their effect on the source file
A set of source code formatting tools installed and in your path
Between uncrustify and greatcode, you should be able to completely replicate the style you want.
Actually, I lied. There is another way and its called clang-format. However, you're going to want to read the documentation on it and its still in early stages so some options don't work very well. It is a beautiful tool though (definitely the smartest of the lot because constructs an AST of your code) and it is even available for Windows.
If you're going to take the time to read the manual, you also want to check out GNU Indent.
Of course, there is the last way, which is actually taking the time to learn vim's indent rules and writing one for your style. It will take time, but it will work with gg=G.
Some notes on astyle vs uncrustify vs greatcode:
Astyle is good for general formatting, but can't do things like align the declaration of variables and re-style comments very well.
Uncrustify can do a LOT of stuff that astyle can't, but be prepared to spend an hour playing around until you've found the correct combination of options you need. (Or if you feel like wasting a lot of time, use genetic algorithms to figure out the best combination of options for your style and when you do share the code and give me a link so I can use it too :) )
Note that you don't have to choose one tool. With vim, you can map one keystroke to execute several commands in succession, so theoretically you could use a combination of these tools to get exactly what you're looking for.
Last but not least, here's an excerpt from my .vimrc file, where I have mapped F12 to invoke astyle with some options:
"A2 = attached brackets
"-s8 indent 8 spaces
"-xc attached braces to class declarations
"-xj remove braces for single statement ifs and elses
"-c convert tabs to spaces in the non-indentation part of the line
map <F12> :%!astyle -A2 -s8 -xc -xj -c<CR>
Don't judge me on the style. Just use the tool to reproduce what you want.
Background: JEdit (and some other text editors as well) support a feature called Multiple simultaneous text insertion points. (at least that's what I'm calling it here).
To understand what this means, take a look at the link.
Out of all the features in use in modern text editors, initial research seems to indicate that this is one feature that both Emacs and Vim do not actually support. If correct, this would be pretty exceptional since it's quite difficult to find a text editor feature that has not made its way into at least one of these two old-school editors.
Question: Has anyone ever seen or implemented this feature in either Emacs, Vim, or both? If so, please point me to a link, script, reference or summary that explains the details.
If you know an alternate way to do the same (or similar) thing, please let me know.
The vim way to do this is the . command which repeats the last change. So, for instance, if I change a pointer to a reference and I have a bunch of
obj->func
that I want to change to
obj.func
then I search for obj->, do 2cw to change the obj-> to obj., then do n.n.n. until all the instances are changed.
Perhaps not a flexible as what you're talking about, but it works frequently and is very intuitive and fast when it does.
moccur-edit.el almost does what you want. All the locations matching the regexp are displayed, and the editing the matches makes changes in the corresponding source. However, the editing is done on a single instance of the occurrence.
I imagine it'd be straight forward to extend it to allow you to edit them all simultaneously (at least in the simple case).
There is a demo of it found here.
Turns out, the newest versions of moccur-edit don't apply changes in real-time - you must apply the changes. The changes are also now undoable (nice win).
In EMACS, you could/would do it with M-x find-grep and a macro. If you really insist that it be fully automatic, then you'd include the find-next in the macro.
But honestly, this strikes me as a sort of Microsoft-feature: yes, it adds to the feature list, but why bother? And would you remember it existed in six months, when you want to use it again?
For emacs, multiple-cursors does exactly that.
Have a look at emacsrocks episode 13, by the author of the module.
I don't think this feature has a direct analogue in either Emacs or Vim, which is not to say that everything achievable with this feature is not possible in some fashion with the two 'old-school' editors. And like most things Emacs and Vim, power-users would probably be able to achieve such a task exceedingly quickly, even if mere mortals like myself could spend five minutes figuring out the correct grep search and replace with appropriate back-references, for example.
YASnippet package for Emacs uses it. See 2:13 and 2:44 in the screencast.
Another slight similarity: In Emacs, the rectangle editing features provided by cua-selection-mode (or cua-mode) automatically gives you multiple insertion points down the left or right edge of the marked rectangle, so that you can type a common prefix or suffix to all of those lines.
e.g.:
M-x cua-selection-mode RET (enable the global minor mode, if you don't already use this or cua-mode)
C-RET down down down (marks a 1x3 character rectangle)
type prefix here
C-RET (unmark the rectangle to return to normal editing)
It should be something like this in vim:
%s/paint.\((.*),/\1.paint(/
Or something like that, I am really bad at "mock" regular expressions.
The idea is substitute the pattern:
/paint(object,/
with
/object.paint(/
So, yes, it is "supported"
It seemed simple to do a basic version of this in Emacs lisp. This is for when you just want two places to insert text in parallel:
(defun cjw-multi-insert (text)
"insert text at both point and mark"
(interactive "sText:")
(insert-before-markers text)
(save-excursion
(exchange-point-and-mark)
(insert-before-markers text)))
When you run it, it prompts for text and inserts it at both point (current position) and mark. You can set the mark with C-SPC. This could be easily extended for N different positions. A function like set-insert-point would record current position (stored as an Emacs marker) into a list and then when you run the multi-insert command, it just iterates through the list adding text at each.
I'm not sure about what would a simple way to handle a more general "multi-editing" feature.
Nope. This would be quite difficult to do with a primarily console-based UI.
That said, there is similar features in vim (and emacs, although I've not used it nearly as much) - search and replace, as people have said, and more similarly, column insert mode: http://pivotallabs.com/users/brian/blog/articles/350-column-edit-mode-in-vi