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.
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.
Edit: I moved this over to the Vi and Vim site: https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/13689/how-to-find-and-replace-in-vim-without-having-to-type-the-original-word
I'd like to optimize my "find and replace" workflow in Vim. It's something I do often, as I'm sure most of you do too. Usually something along the lines of -- copy a block and change the name of a variable in a few places. I know, I know, that probably triggers your "why are you copying and pasting code" reflex, but let's not go down that road... There are plenty of valid use cases :)
I'm well aware of the search and replace commands: :s or :%s but I don't like them. It forces me to type out both the full variable name I'm searching for and what I'm changing it to. Maybe there is a better way fix the the amount of typing with :%s? I often use long descriptive variable names, so that is really a deal breaker for me. I also don't like how typing out a variable name from scratch is typo prone and can consume time and brainpower hunting down typos. I much prefer typing it once, and then copying and pasting to just avoid this entirely if possible.
My current workflow uses some combination of movement/yank/select/search/put to move around the file and replace one by one. It is not great but has the benefit of avoiding typing out full variable names. I might just need to type the first few letters with / or use another movement command (i.e. fx) depending on what's around and then hit ve to select the whole word. I also don't mind that I have to repeat for every instance. I never do a full find replace without confirming each change. But it would be much preferable if I could repeat the replacement action with a single keystroke (which I can't do with this method). each replacement is usually something like n then ve then p (or even worse "0p)
Is there a faster way?
My own workflow is similar to yours:
To start, get the cursor on one instance, possibly with / or by navigation.
Hit * to find the next instance of that word.
Change one instance with cw and then the new variable name.
Then it's fast: n/N to get to the next/previous instance, and . to repeat the last edit.
This workflow gives me the same advantage as yours, in that I can review each case before applying the change, but it's just two keystrokes for each additional change.
Hope this helps.
I like the "visual highlight then edit" approach.
shift + v to highlight the region that you want to modify.
then :s/old/new/r where old is what word you want to replace with new.
r changes the first instance of that word old.
Note* There are options other than r which modify its behavior how you want to replace the word.
i. The Problem
My goal is something like the following:
I have a line of text like
Who left the dead mouse in the fridge?
and I want to highlight the first the in green, just this one occurrence. That is, I don't want to syn match ThisMagicWord "\<the\>" or anything that will overzealously highlight other thes.
There is one other requirement, which is that if the user edits the other text on the line, say to
Who on earth left the delicious dead mouse in the fridge?
the highlighting will track with the word the, so long as the user doesn't edit that one particular word.
ii. The Kludge
Now, I have a solution to this. In fact, I am proud of my solution, because it was tricky to think up. But it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good solution.
It turns out that the Unicode character Combining Grapheme Joiner is effectively a no-op in Vim. It produces no glyph, and takes up no width. It is the only such character that I have discovered. So what I do is, I surreptitiously edit the line in question to be
Who left the<CGJ> dead mouse in the fridge?
and then define a rule
syn match ThisMagicWord "the<CGJ>"
I will additionally trigger on BufWritePre and BufWritePost to strip the CGJs out of the file on disk.
iii. The Questions
Is there a no-op character in Vim (or a way to produce one) other than CGJ? Ideally a non-combining character, since the<CGJ> will not match a search for /the, due to the way Vim regexes handle combining characters.
Is there a better way to get at the behavior that I want?
You're right that there's currently no good way to mark static matches and keep them up-to-date when edits are done nearby. My approach would have been worse than your kludge: Include the line / column information in the match (via the \%l and \%v special atoms), and attempting to update those with a combination of marks (works for line changes) and intra-line custom diffing.
Though your use of special Unicode characters is clever, it's (as you admit) a hack. I've asked you for uses in the comments, and am still not completely satisfied / convinced. If you can come up with good, real use cases and current pain points, please direct them to the vim_dev mailing list (best with a functional draft patch attached). The functionality to keep track of such text is basically there (in the Vim internals), it's just not yet tracked and exposed to users / Vimscript. Though Vim development has been (often frustratingly) slow, with a compelling argument on your side, new functionality can and does happen.
How about using marks?
Move the cursor to the word you want, set a lowercase letter mark (e.g. mz), then add highlighting for the word like \%'zthe
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.
I'm getting more and more comfortable with Vim after a few months.
BUT, there is only one simple feature I can't get any answer from the web. That is "Search and replace the results". The problem is that I know:
:/keyword to search, and hit enter "keyword" will be highlighted (of course with set hlsearch)
n, or N to navigate
:% s/keyword/new_keyword/g to replace all occurences of keyword with new_keyword.
BUT, I would think that there must be a way to search, and replace the matched keyword (highlighted) with any new_keyword WITHOUT doing ":% s/keyword/new_keyword/g", which is a lot of typing considering search & replace is such a day-to-day feature.
Any answers/comments will be greatly appreciated!
If you've already done a search you can do a substitution for the same pattern by simply leaving out the pattern in the substitute command. eg:
/keyword
searchs for "keyword", and then:
:%s//new_keyword/g
will replace all occurrences of "keyword" with "new_keyword".
Searching and using the dot command (you didn't meantion you are using the dot command, that's why I highlight it) to repeat the last input action is my best bet here.
I use s///g for search and replace.
Well, since #keyword# and #new_keyword# account for most of the characters, and you need some way to differentiate between them (i.e., a character in vim, or tab between entry fields in dialog in a different editor), you're left with maybe four or five keystrokes beyond that.
So I think you're probably overestimating number of keystrokes and also forgetting that (1) it becomes very natural, and (2) working this way allows you also to naturally modify the action performed by specifying a different range or option flag.
But you can cut down on keystrokes. If you want you can map a key to automatically bring up the command line with '%s/' already in place. e.g.:
nmap s :%s/
The command above would remap 's' (I'm not recommending remapping to that key, but it gives the idea) and set you up to insert the keyword.
Also, you can set the 'gdefault' option to default to substituting multiple times per line. This lets you skip the ending '/g' in your keystrokes:
set gdefault
See ':h gdefault' for help section on that option.
In the end I would say just get used to the default way it works, because using it that way allows you to keep same basic operation when you want to specify different ranges or option flags, and creating a new special map is just another thing to remember. gdefault may be worth setting if you think you're going to want it majority of time, adding /g flag at end when gdefault is set has effect of turning /g off. . .
Move to the first highlighted word then record a macro for replacing the word and moving to the next one, e.g:
gg
n
qq
caw new_word^[
n
q
#q
##
##
...