I have a long line of characters in vim. I'd like to insert a newline after 80 characters. How do I do that?
:%s/.\{80}/&\r/g
%: process the entire file
s: substitute
.: matches any character
{80}: matches every 80 occurrences of previous character (in this case, any character)
&: the match result
\r: newline character
g: perform the replacement globally
Using regular expression:
:%s/\(.\{80\}\)/\1\r/g
Using recursive Vim macro:
qqqqq79la<Enter><esc>#qq#q
qqq Clear contents in register q.
qq start marco in register q
79la<Enter> Carriage return after 80 characters.
<esc> go back to normal mode
#q run macro q which we are about to create now.
q complete recording macro
#q run macro
You can also modify this approved answer to only insert the newline at the first space occurring after the 80th character:
%s/\(.\{80\}.\{-}\s\)/\1\r/g
Related
Please let me know, How I can remove the last word from each line using vim commands?
Before :
abcdef 123
xyz 1256
qwert 2
asdf 159
after :
abcdef
xyz
qwert
asdf
Similarly please let me know how to remove the second word from each line using vim command?
Use the following regex (in ex mode):
%s/\s*\w\+\s*$//
This tells it to find optional whitespace, followed by one or more word characters, followed by optional whitespace, followed by end of line—then replace it with nothing.
The question's been answered already, but here's what I'd more likely end up doing:
Record a macro:
qq to record a macro into register "q"
$ to go to the end of the line
daw to delete a word
q to stop recording
Then select the rest of the lines:
j to go down a line
vG to select to the end of the file
And apply the macro:
:norm #q
Some similar alternatives:
:%norm $daw
qq$dawjq (note the added j) then 999#q to replay the macro many times. (Macro execution stops at the first "error" -- in this case, you'd probably hit the bottom of the file, j would not work, and the macro would stop.)
The key for this is the :substitute command; it is very powerful (and often used in vi / Vim).
You need to come up with a regular expression pattern that matches what you want to delete. For the last word, that's whitespace (\s), one or more times \+ (or any number (*), depending on how you want to treat single-word lines), followed by word characters (\w\+), anchored to the end of the line ($). Note that word has a special meaning in Vim; you may want to use a different atom (e.g. \S). Voila:
:%s/\s\+\w\+$//
For the second word, you can make use of the special \zs and \ze atoms that assert for matches, but do not actually match: Anchored at the start (^), match a word, then start the match for a second one:
:%s/^\w\+\s\+\zs\w\+\s\+//
Soon, you'll also want to reorder things, not just remove them. For that, you need to know capturing groups: \(...\). The text matched by those can then be referred to in the replacement part. For example, to swap the first and second words:
:%s/^\(\w\+\s\+\)\(\w\+\s\+\)/\2\1/
For details, have a look at the help, especially :help :substitute and :help pattern.
To remove the second word from the start of a line, use the following:
:%s/^\(\s*\w\+\s\+\)\w\+\s*/\1/
Update
To treat special characters as part of the word, you have to use the \S (which matches all non-whitespace characters) instead of \w (which matches only word characters [0-9A-Za-z_]). Then, the command would be:
:%s/^\(\s*\S\+\s\+\)\S\+\s*/\1/
I have the following characters being repeated at the end of every line:
^[[00m
How can I remove them from each line using the Vim editor?
When I give the command :%s/^[[00m//g, it doesn't work.
You could use :%s/.\{6}$// to literally delete 6 characters off the end of each line.
The : starts ex mode which lets you execute a command. % is a range that specifies that this command should operate on the whole file. The s stands for substitute and is followed by a pattern and replace string in the format s/pattern/replacement/. Our pattern in this case is .\{6}$ which means match any character (.) exactly 6 times (\{6}) followed by the end of the line ($) and replace it with our replacement string, which is nothing. Therefore, as I said above, this matches the last 6 characters of every line and replaces them with nothing.
I would use the global command.
Try this:
:g/$/norm $xxxxxx
or even:
:g/$/norm $5Xx
I think the key to this problem is to keep it generic and not specific to the characters you are trying to delete. That way the technique you learn will be applicable to many other situations.
Assuming this is an ANSI escape sequence, the ^[ stands for a single <Esc> character. You have to enter it by pressing Ctrl + V (or Ctrl + Q) on many Windows Vim installations), followed by Esc. Notice how this is then highlighted in a slightly different color, too.
It's easy enough to replace the last six characters of every line being agnostic to what those characters are, but it leaves considerable room for error so I wouldn't recommend it. Also, if ^[ is an escape character, you're really looking for five characters.
Escape code
Using ga on the character ^[ you can determine whether it's an escape code, in which case the status bar would display
<^[> 27, Hex 1b, Octal 033
Assuming it is, you can replace everything using
:%s/\%x1b\[00m$//gc
With \%x1b coming from the hex value above. Note also that you have to escape the bracket ([) because it's a reserved character in Vim regex. $ makes sure it occurs at the end of a line, and the /gc flags will make it global and confirm each replacement (you can press a to replace all).
Not escape code
It's a simple matter of escaping then. You can use either of the two below:
:%s/\^\[\[00m$//gc
:%s/\V^[[00m\$//gc
If they are all aligning, you can do a visual-block selection and delete it then.
Otherwise, if you have a sequence unknown how to input, you can visually select it by pressing v, then mark and yank it y (per default into register "). Then you type :%s/<C-R>"//g to delete it.
Note:
<C-R>" puts the content of register " at the cursor position.
If you yanked it into another register, say "ay (yank to register a - the piglatin yank, as I call it) and forgot where you put it, you can look at the contents of your registers with :reg.
<C-R> is Vim speak for Ctrl+R
This seems to work fine when the line is more than 5 chars long:
:perldo $_ = substr $_, 0, -5
but when the line is 5 or less chars long it does nothing.
Maybe there is a easy way in perl to delete the last 5 chars of a string, but I don't really know it:)
Use this to delete:
:%s/^[[00m//gc
Say I have ten lines and I want to prepend text to some word that occurs in those lines? It does not have to be at the beginning of the line.
From:
sdfsd foo sdfsd
sfsd foo fsdf
sdfsdf foo sdfsdf
to:
sdfsd bar(foo sdfsd
sfsd bar(foo fsdf
sdfsdf bar(foo sdfsdf
Is it also possible to not only prepend the bar( but actually surround foo with bar(foo)?
I would also like a quick way to append // comments to multiple lines (C-style comments).
I use Vim/GVim 7.2.
Go to the first foo, press Ctrl-v to enter visual block mode and press down until all the lines with foo are marked. Then press Shift-i to insert at the beginning (of the block). When you are finished and press Esc, the inserted characters will be added to each line at the left of the marked block.
To insert at the end, press again Ctrl-v, move up/down to mark all affected lines and then press End or $ to extend the selection until the end of the lines. Now you can press Shift-a to append at the end of all the lines, just like previously with Shift-i.
The visual selection can also be done with normal movement commands. So to comment a whole block in C you could move to the opening brace and type Ctrl-v % Shift-i // Esc.
To answer your first question, the below
:%s/foo/bar(&)/g
will look for foo, and surround the matched pattern with bar(). The /g will do this multiple times in one line.
Since you're just matching foo, you could do a simple :s/foo/bar(foo)/g. The above will work, however, if you decide to match on a regular expression rather than a simple word (e.g. f[a-z][a-z]). The '&' in the above represents what you've matched.
To prefix a set of lines I use one of two different approaches:
One approach is the block select (mentioned by sth). In general, you can select a rectangular region with ctrl-V followed by cursor-movement. Once you've highlighted a rectangle, pressing shift-I will insert characters on the left side of the rectangle, or shift-A will append them on the right side of the rectangle. So you can use this technique to make a rectangle that includes the left-most column of the lines you want to prefix, hit shift-I, type the prefix, and then hit escape.
The other approach is to use a substitution (as mentioned by Brian Agnew). Brian's substitution will affect the entire file (the % in the command means "all lines"). To affect just a few lines the easiest approach is to hit shift-V (which enables visual-line mode) while on the first/last line, and then move to the last/first line. Then type:
:s/^/YOUR PREFIX/
The ^ is a regex (in this case, the beginning of the line). By typing this in visual line mode you'll see '<,'> inserted before the s automatically. This means the range of the substitution will be the visual selection.
Extra tip: if your prefix contains slashes, you can either escape them with backslash, or you can use a different punctuation character as the separator in the command. For example, to add C++ line comments, I usually write:
:s:^:// :
For adding a suffix the substitution approach is generally easier unless all of your lines are exactly the same length. Just use $ for the pattern instead of ^ and your string will be appended instead of pre-pended.
If you want to add a prefix and a suffix simultaneously, you can do something like this:
:s/.*/PREFIX & SUFFIX/
The .* matches the whole line. The & in the replacement puts the matched text (the whole line) back, but now it'll have your prefix and suffix added.
BTW: when commenting out code you'll probably want to uncomment it later. You can use visual-block (ctrl-V) to select the slashes and then hit d to delete them, or you can use a substitution (probably with a visual line selection, made with shift-V) to remove the leading slashes like this:
:s:// ::
:normal to the rescue!
:%norm Wibar(
:%norm WEa)
:norm(al) replays the commands as if you had typed them:
W - goes to the next word
i - starts insertion mode
bar( - types the sequence 'bar('
Or in one line:
:%norm Wibar(ctrlvESCEa)
If you're running Windows then type ctrlq instead of ctrlv.
Yet another possibility (probably not-so-useful in your test case, but handy in other situations) is to cordon off the area you want to change with marks.
Put the cursor anywhere in the top line and press 'a
Put the cursor anywhere in the last line and press 'b
Issue the command :'a,'b s/foo/bar(&)/
I usually like visual block mode if everything is visible on the screen, and I usually prefer marks if the start and stop are separated by many screens.
Another simple regular expression is:
%s/^/<text you want to prepend>/
For the C-style comments, use the regexp answer by Brian, and match on line ending $, and insert away.
When I yank a whole line and press p, Vim creates a new line to put the yanked text, because of the newline characters. But if I yank part of a line is there a way to put that yanked text in a new line? I currently do o ESC p. Is this the only way?
Here's your answer from Vim help:
:[line]pu[t] [x] Put the text [from register x] after [line] (default
current line). This always works |linewise|, thus
this command can be used to put a yanked block as new
lines.
The cursor is left on the first non-blank in the last
new line.
The register can also be '=' followed by an optional
expression. The expression continues until the end of
the command. You need to escape the '|' and '"'
characters to prevent them from terminating the
command. Example: >
:put ='path' . \",/test\"
< If there is no expression after '=', Vim uses the
previous expression. You can see it with ":dis =".
:[line]pu[t]! [x] Put the text [from register x] before [line] (default
current line).
But colon-p-u-enter is more keystrokes anyway =/
Theres o(c-r)0 as you can always paste from registers while your in insert mode but thats only if you want to remain in insert mode after the paste
How do I delete first word of each line in Vim?
How about a pattern on each line?
:normal to the rescue:
:%norm dw
It basically replays the arguments as if you were typing them in normal ('non-edit') mode.
From :help :
:norm[al][!] {commands}
Execute Normal mode commands {commands}.
This makes it possible to execute Normal mode commands typed on the
command-line. {commands} is executed like it is typed.
Going for cryptic here, in true vi style:
1Gq10dwjq100000#1
Randy fixed this up in the comments to work on more than 100000 lines:
ggqqdwj#qq#q
For those starting out with Vim, this breaks down to:
gg - Go to first line
qq - Record a macro into register 'q'
dwj#q - The macro:
dw - delete word at cursor
j - go down one line
#q - run the macro in register 'q'
q - Stop recording the macro
#q - Execute the macro in register 'q'
In essence, the macro is recursive - it deletes a word, moves down a line, then calls itself again, repeating for each line until end of file. The final '#q' is the initial (manual) call needed to set the macro off on every line.
I would use something like the following:
:%s/^\w+\s+//
The regular expression will match one or more "word" characters starting at the beginning of the line followed by at least one whitespace character. It will remove the word and any following whitespace. If a line can contain only a single word -- and you still want it removed -- you could use alternation to match either whitespace or the end of line.
:%s/^\w+(\s+|$)//
First word (where word is defined as no whitespace)
:%s/^\s*[^ ]* //g
Delete pattern:
:%s/< insert pattern here >//g
What about this?
:%!cut -s -d' ' -f2-
:%s,^[^ ]*,,
From the beginning of the line match anything, but not a space and replace with none.
Although this is an old question, if someone else is looking to do this you could do use visual block.
press ctrl+v
select all the lines you would want to edit
now use arrow keys to select the entire word
press 'x'
That would delete the first word in all the lines. This method is especially very handy to edit log files