Is it possible to search within vim for more than one word?
For example:
Let's say i'm inside vim and I press / in order to start a search for a certain word, is it possible to search for more than one word in the same search?
Yes, you can have several branches in a search pattern:
/foo\|bar
See :help \|.
Use the OR operator
/first\|second
If you do this often, my SearchAlternatives plugin may be useful to you.
The plugin provides mappings and commands to add and subtract alternative
branches to the current search pattern. Currently searching for "foo", but
also want to find matches for "bar"? You could type /foo\|bar<CR> or
/<C-R>/\|bar<CR>, but once you want to limit the search to whole \<words\>
(like the * command), and juggle several alternatives, adding and
dropping them as you search, this plugin is quicker than manually editing the
search command-line (which you can still do).
Related
In vim (in Insert mode, after running exuberant ctags), I am using ctrl-x followed by ctrl-] to bring up a dropdown of various possible words/tokens. It's a great feature.
The problem is that by default, this list starts with a bunch of numeric options and automatically inserts the first numeric option, and if I backspace to get rid of the numbers and start typing a part of a word fresh -- with the idea of searching from the middle of the word -- the autocompletion behavior exits entirely.
I know I could type the first letter of the word that I want, then go from there. But that assumes that I know the first letter of the word, which is not necessarily a given.
For example, if I'm working on a pair-programming project with a friend during a long weekend, I might not remember at any given moment whether he called his method promoteRecordStatus(), updateRecordStatus() or boostRecordStatus(). In this example, I would like to type RecordStatus and get the relevant result, which does not seem to be possible at a glance with the current behavior.
So with that scenario in mind: Is there a simple, vim-native way to tell the editor to start its autocompletion without any assumptions, then search all available tokens for my typed string in all parts of each token?
I will of course consider plugin suggestions helpful, but I would prefer a short, vim-native answer that doesn't require any plugins if possible. Ideally, the configuration could be set using just a line or two.
The built-in completions all require a match at the starting position. In some cases, you could drop separator characters from the 'iskeyword' option (e.g. in Vimscript, drop # to be able to complete individual components from foo#bar#BazFunction()), but this won't work for camelCaseWords at all.
Custom :help complete-functions can implement any completion search, though. To be based on the tags database, it would have to use taglist() as a source, and filter according to the completion base entered before triggering the completion. If you do not anchor this pattern match at the beginning, you have your desired completion.
I am using vim to edit structured text files.
Sometimes I use search-and-replace feature, and sometimes I am better off with search, followed with a macro, in which case I have several macros at hand, and the choice of one depends upon the particular search result.
In both cases, though I have to spend some effort to arrive at an acceptable regex to satisfy my editing needs. As the regexs are often very long and sophisticated, I end up with both command-line history and search history full of my trial-and-error by-products. The correct regex is not always the last one in a series of attempts, so if I want to reuse the hard-earned regex in a similar editing situation, I have to dig through the pile again.
In search-and-replace scenario I have quickly fixed this with comments that I now put in place at the end of a would-be reusable search-and-replace command string, for example:
:%s/very_long_and_sophisticated_regex/another_long_and_sophisticated_regex/gc "comments on what this search and replace command does and how it might be reused
This way I can easily ignore the piles of stuff in my command line history and quickly find relevant re-use candidates, they are shown in different color. The commands are reusable right away, comments are ignored.
Not so with the search history, though.
Having rtfmed and searched the web, I have not found anything similar. At the moment I put quasi-comments using XXX at the end of reusable search strings, for example:
/search_string_containing_very_long_and_sophisticated_regex XXX comments on what it finds and how it might be re-used
This way I can at least find the right string for re-use, but I have to first delete 'XXX' and the comments.
I wonder if there is a more elegant way of commenting the search strings in search history, similar to command-line history.
You used the word "elegant" in your title, and that I don't have on offer. If instead you can also accept a quirky workaround that relies on Vim internals, here's one.
To restate your problem, it is possible to add comments after Ex :commands,
:AComplicatedExCommand -42 -quux " this fizzes the brobble
:HardToRememberCommand test.txt " use this to brew the framble
but the same is not possible for complicated search /queries (or ?queries).
I've just discovered that you can trick Vim by terminating your search query with a literal null byte:
/[Complicated]*regexp/^# this regexp finds all scrobbles
/another\+Rege\x*p/^# use this to search foo bars
The ^# here is a literal NUL. You can enter it by pressing CtrlV and then 000.
Vim will ignore everything after the null byte, but it'll still show the whole line in the search history, including the "comment".
You can add a regexp branch that never matches, e.g. /\%$indicator\|search string
\%$ is a special Vim atom matching the end of the file. Since that will never match when followed by the indicator text, the first branch (up to \|) will never match and therefore can represent your indicator.
I've created the TaggedSearchPattern plugin to make adding the tag and recalling it even easier.
I know that the incsearch setting controls how search in vim highlights as you type. I would like to have the same incremental search and highlight when using the replace command (:%s/foo/bar/ )
The easiest way to do that is to do a search like normal, using 'incsearch' to help ensure the pattern is matching what you want. Once you've got that nailed down, you can either
Leave out the search pattern in :%s//bar/. When there's no specified search pattern, the current value of the / register is used, which will be the search you just did.
Insert the search pattern into the :s command using Ctrl+r/ (see :help c_ctrl-r) or Ctrl+rCtrl+o/ (if the search contains control characters, like ^H). This is useful if you want to make some final tweaks to the pattern or if you want to have it in your command history so you can reuse it even after performing another search.
You could add c at the end of your command like that:
:%s/foo/bar/c
It will walk through all the instances of foo and ask for your confirmation (that's what the c stands for) before changing it to bar.
It's not exactly what you are after though.
this is a simple query about the searching in vim editor.
consider that i searched for a string like "str" with
/str
now after this search i wanted to search for "strcat" like
/strcat
but, the point in here is that i dont want to type entire /str again.... just wanted to add the new text to /str. that is when we made the first search we type /str and for the second search i just wanted to type cat for searching the entire /strcat.
can any of you vi guru's tell me if it is possible for us to do some search like this in vi.
thanks in advance
The / key begins a search string. up arrow recalls the previous line(s). Therefore,
/ up-arrow cat
will resume your search.
Besides up-arrow to get the previous search, you can also do /^f to be able to fully edit many previous searches. (That's / followed by Ctrl+F). Put the cursor on the previous search that you want to edit, edit it, and hit return.
Others have answered the question you asked, but on the off chance that incremental search would better suit your workflow, I thought I would mention it.
If you're only searching once and finding out that what you're searching for is not unique enough and you need to add more characters, incremental search will show you that before you press enter.
Put the following in your .vimrc to enable incremental search:
set incsearch
How can I bring back the last string I used for a search or a search&replace?
For example, assume that I enter :%s/some_text/some_other_text/gc and vim gives me the E486: Patterns not found: some_text error message back. I then realize that I actually meant to write some_magic_text instead of some_text. At that point, how can I get back my original string in the bottom command row (or whatever it is called) so I can change it and do a second search? Is there a nifty little command for that?
In this brief example it looks unnecessary, but when the text you are looking to replace is mighty long and you just typed one letter wrong, it is fantastically annoying to have to retype everything.
And I am using MacVim if that makes any difference.
From the normal mode, hit q/ to navigate through your search history!
Check out this vimvcast which explains what you want.
More generally, you can recall any command you have previously typed by entering the first few characters, and then use arrow multiple times to navigate in history.
In your case, you could type:
:%s<Up>
See :help history
This answer might be good an improvement to what you are after, after all.
Use search with highlighting, to interactively check if the regex you are crafting is definitely working, and then use it in a search-replace.
:se is (incsearch, better put se is in your .vimrc)
/<search term>
check with n/N if you are happy with the matches
:s%//<replace term>/g
When omitting the <search term> in the search-replace in 4., the last used search will be used.
For acessing the list of last (search-replace) commands use q:, or as already noted q/ for the list of last search terms.
Bonus:
When using :se gd, s/<search>/<replace> will behave as s/<search>/<replace>/g.
Accessing just the first search match in each line can then still be done with adding /g, so essentially both behaviours are just switched.
/ and then up to bring up the last search query.