Suppose I have 5 lines of text, if I input some commands to let vim process each line, Vim will process the text one by one, first line, second line, ... the last line. what I want is to let Vim process my text in reverse order. that is the last line first, then the 4th line, and at last the first line.
Why I need this?
I have the following text
1234567890
abc
123
def
1234567890
123456789
I want to remove the newline symbol(\n) from lines which contains 3 characters. so after processing，I will get the following text
1234567890
abc123def1234567890
123456789
It seems a piece of cake, I use the following command
:%s/\v(^\w{3})\n/\1/
But what i got is
1234567890
abc123
def1234567890
1234567890
Why? I guess vim first remove \n from the second line, then this line has text abc123, now vim will not remove \n after 123, since it's not 3 characters now, so vim process the next line def, and remove \n from it, that's the result i got.
If vim can process from back to front, this will not happen and I can got the result I want.
BTW, I can get the expected result in other ways, I just want to know whether this is possible.
Explicitly loop over the range of lines (e.g. the visually selected ones) backwards, then execute the command on each line. I've used :join here instead of the :substitute with a newline:
:for i in range(line("'>"), line("'<"), -1)| silent execute i . 'g/^\w\{3}$/join!' | endfor
Can be achieved using perl:
while (<>) {
chomp if (/^...$/);
print;
}
In this case it is easier to use the :global command to join the lines.
:g/^\w\{3}$/normal! gJ
The command gJ joins the current line with the following line without inserting any spaces. The global command above calls gJ on each line containing only three characters. It works by marking all the matches first, before performing the operation, so the problem of looping is avoided.
this line should do what you want:
:%s/\v(\_^\w{3}\n)+/\=substitute(submatch(0),"\n","","g")/
if you want to do it simpler with external command, e.g. awk, you could:
%!awk '{printf "\%s", length($0)==3? $0:$0"\n"}'
Related
I'm quite new to Vim/Vi, and I need to write a custom function/macro.
Is it possible to define a command (ex. :mycommand) that would format the lines in the current file like so:
Initial lines:
This is line 1
This is line 2
This is line 3
This is line 4
This is line 5
This is line 6
This is line 7
This is line 8
Result:
This is line 1\nThis is line 2
This is line 3\nThis is line 4
This is line 5
This is line 6\nThis is line 7\nThis is line 8
How do I go about creating such a script? And where do I place it?
Marco
You can record a macro, to join two lines by \n separator, for example in your vimrc:
let #x='gJi\n^['
(the ^[ above, you press ctrl-v Esc)
Assume your cursor is on the first line, you can do #x in normal mode, then )J## for the 2nd block, then job is done.
You can wrap those operations in function or create them as mapping.
Join plugin
I have written a Join script: https://github.com/sk1418/Join , it supports to join lines with separator and other features, in your case, you can execute command: :J '\n', it will do what above macro (#x) does. You can put it in your function too, like:
function Foo()
Join '\n'
join!
Join '\n'
endfunction
Update for the Question modification:
The modification you made, turned the question into another one... However it could be solved, I listed two possibilities below, one is vim way, the other is with external awk tool, if you have awk available on your system.
with vim :s cmd
This command should do it for you:
%s/\n\n/∢/g|%s/\n\ze./\\n/g|%s/∢/\r/g
the ∢ is done by pressing ctrl-v u2222, it is just for a special char, which not exists in your text, you can use other uni-code chars too.
with external awk
%!awk -v RS='\n\n' '{gsub(ORS, "\\n")}7'
This will do the transformation for you, however it leaves an extra \n at the end of the file, just remove it.
I'm reviewing some logs with Java exception spam. The spam is getting is making it hard to see the other errors.
Is is possible in vim to select a block of text, using visual mode. Delete that block every place it occurs in the file.
If vim can't do it, I know silly question, vim can do everything. What other Unix tools might do it?
Sounds like you are looking for the :global command
:g/pattern/d
The :global command takes the form :g/{pat}/{cmd}. Read it as: run command, {cmd}, on every line matching pattern, {pat}.
You can even supply a range to the :delete (:d for short) command. examples:
:,+3d
:,/end_pattern/d
Put this togehter with the :global command and you can accomplish a bunch. e.g. :g/pat/,/end_pat/d
For more help see:
:h :g
:h :d
:h :range
Vim
To delete all matching lines:
:g/regex/d
To only delete the matches themselves:
:%s/regex//g
In either case, you can copy the visual selection to the command line by yanking it and then inserting it with <C-r>". For example, if your cursor (|) is positioned as follows:
hello wo|rld
Then you can select world with viw, yank the selection with y, and then :g/<C-r>"/d.
sed
To delete all matching lines:
$ sed '/regex/d' file
To only delete the matches themselves:
$ sed 's/regex//g' file
grep
To delete all matching lines:
$ grep -v 'regex' file
grep only operates line-wise, so it's not possible to only delete matches within lines.
you can try this in vim
:g/yourText/ d
Based on our discussion in the comments, I guess a "block" means several complete lines. If the first and last lines are distinctive, then the method you gave in the comments should work. (By "distinctive" I mean that there is no danger that these lines occur anywhere else in your log file.)
For simplifications, I would use "ay$ to yank the first line into register a and "by$ to yank the last line into register b instead of using Visual mode. (I was going to suggest "ayy and "byy, but that wold capture the newlines)
To be on the safe side, I would anchor the patterns: /^{text}$/ just in case the log file contains a line like "Note that {text} marks the start of the Java exception." On the command line, I would use <C-R>a and <C-R>b to paste in the contents of the two registers, as you suggested.
:g/^<C-R>a$/,/^<C-R>b$/d
What if the yanked text includes characters with special meaning for search patterns? To be on the really safe side, I would use the \V (very non-magic) modifier and escape any slashes and backslashes:
:g/\V\^<C-R>=escape(#a, '/\')<CR>\$/,/\V\^<C-R>=escape(#b, '/\')<CR>\$/d
Note that <C-R>= puts you on a fresh command line, and you return to the main one with <CR>.
It is too bad that \V was not available when matchit was written. It has to deal with text from the buffer in a search pattern, much like this.
Suppose I'm editing the following document (* = cursor):
Lions
Tigers
Kittens
Puppies
*
Humans
What sequence can I use to delete the surrounding white space so that I'm left with:
Lions
Tigers
Kittens
Puppies
*
Humans
Note: I'm looking for an answer that handles any number of empty lines, not just this exact case.
EDIT 1: Line numbers are unknown and I only want to effect the span my cursor is in.
EDIT 2: Edited example to show I need to preserve leading whitespace on edges
Thanks
Easy. In normal mode, dipO<Esc> should do it.
Explanation:
dip on a blank line deletes it and all adjacent blank lines.
O<Esc> opens a new empty line, then goes back to normal mode.
Even more concise, cip<Esc> would roll these two steps into one, as suggested by #Lorkenpeist.
A possible solution is to use the :join command with a range:
:?.?+1,/./-1join!
Explanation:
[range]join! will join together a [range] of lines. The ! means with out inserting any extra space.
The starting point is to search backwards to the first character then down 1 line, ?.?+1
As the 1 in +1 can be assumed this can be abbreviated ?.?+
The ending point is to search forwards to the next character then up 1 line, /./-1
Same as before the 1 can be assumed so, /./-
As we are using the same pattern only searching forward the pattern can be omitted. //-
The command :join can be shorted to just :j
Final shortened command:
:?.?+,//-j!
Here are some related commands that might be handy:
1) to delete all empty lines:
:g/^$/d
:v/./d
2) Squeeze all empty lines into just 1 empty line:
:v/./,//-j
For more help see:
:h :j
:h [range]
:h :g
:h :v
Short Answer: ()V)kc<esc>
In normal mode, if you type () your cursor will move to the first blank line. ( moves the cursor to the beginning of the previous block of non-blank lines, and ) moves the cursor to the end (specifically, to the first blank line after said block). Then a simple d) will delete all text until the beginning of the next non-blank line. So the complete sequence is ()d).
EDIT: You're right, that deletes the whitespace at the beginning of the next non-blank line. Instead of d) try V)kd. V puts you in visual line mode, ) jumps to the first non-blank line (skipping the whitespace at the beginning of the line), k moves the cursor up one line. At this point you've selected all the blank lines, so d deletes the selection.
Finally, type O (capital O) followed by escape to crate a new blank line to replace the ones you deleted. Alternatively, replacing dO<Escape> with c<Escape> does the same thing with one less keystroke, so the entire sequence would be ()V)kc<Esc>.
These answers are irrelevant after the updated question:
This may not be the answer you want to hear, but I would make use of ranges. Take a look at the line number for the first empty line (let's say 55 for example) and the second to last empty line (perhaps 67). Then just do :55,67d.
Or, perhaps you only want there to ever be one empty line in your whole file. In that case you can match any occurrence of one or more empty lines and replace them with one empty line.
:%s/\(^$\n\)\+/\r/
This answer works:
If you just want to use normal mode you could search for the last line with something on it. For instance,
/.<Enter>kkVNjd
I didn't test so much, but it should work for your examples. There maybe more elegant solutions.
function! DelWrapLines()
while match(getline('.'),'^\s*$')>=0
exe 'normal kJ'
endwhile
exe 'silent +|+,/./-1d|noh'
exe 'normal k'
endfunction
source it and try :call DelWrapLines()
I know this question has already been resolved, but I just found a great solution in "sed & awk, 2nd Ed." (O'Reilly) that I thought was worth sharing. It does not use vim at all, but instead uses sed. This script will replace all instances of one or more blank lines (assuming there is no whitespace in those lines) with a single blank line. On the command line:
sed '/ˆ$/{
N
/ˆ\n$/D
}' myfile
Keep in mind that sed does not actually edit the file, but instead prints the edited lines to standard output. You can redirect this input to a file:
sed '/ˆ$/{
N
/ˆ\n$/D
}' myfile > tempfile
Be careful though, if you try to write it directly to myfile, it will just delete the entire contents of the file, which is clearly not what you want! After you write the output to tempfile, you can just mv tempfile myfile and tada! All instances of multiple blank lines are replaced by a single blank line.
Even better:
cat -s myfile > temp
mv temp myfile
cat is awesome, yes?
Bestest:
If you want to do it inside vim, you can replace all instances of multiple blank lines with a single blank line by using vim's handy feature of executing shell commands on a range of lines within vim.
:%!cat -s
That's all it takes, and your entire file is reformatted all nice!
In vim I filter, say the current single line, using !! through a Unix command. To achieve this I defined the following shortcut in .vimrc
:map <Enter> !!mycommand<CR>:,+1<CR>
Pressing <Enter> this takes me to the line below the current if mycommand replaces my single input line be exactly one output line. If the output has more lines (number of lines unknown before command execution) it will still take me to the line below the current.
Now, I would like to know how I can always get to the first line below the inserted output of mycommand.
The modified shortcut would then allow me to 'execute' the text file line by line using just <Enter> displaying the output each time.
If there is no way to do this without any previous knowledge of the output of mycommand, maybe there is one knowing say the first character of each output line.
Thanks a lot!
You can use the special marks '[ and '], which mark the start and end of the last changed (or yanked) text. Change your map to:
:map <Enter> !!mycommand<CR>']+
Note that I'm using + in place of your ex command. This will jump to the first non-blank character in next line. If that's not what you want, you may try simply j or, use a shorter version of your original map:
:map <Enter> !!mycommand<CR>']:+1<CR>
You don't really need the comma, to make this a range. This command is just a simplified :#, where # is a line number to jump. Here you can use . meaning "current line", and then :.+1 moves to the next line. But you can omit the dot, and that's why :+1 does the same.
How can I add line numbers to a range of lines in a file opened in Vim? Not as in :set nu—this just displays line numbers—but actually have them be prepended to each line in the file?
With
:%s/^/\=line('.')/
EDIT: to sum up the comments.
This command can be tweaked as much as you want.
Let's say you want to add numbers in front of lines from a visual selection (V + move), and you want the numbering to start at 42.
:'<,'>s/^/\=(line('.')-line("'<")+42)/
If you want to add a string between the number and the old text from the line, just concatenate (with . in VimL) it to the number-expression:
:'<,'>s/^/\=(line('.')-line("'<")+42).' --> '/
If you need this to sort as text, you may want to zero pad the results, which can be done using printf for 0001, 0002 ... instead of 1, 2... eg:
:%s/^/\=printf('%04d', line('.'))/
Anyway, if you want more information, just open vim help: :h :s and follow the links (|subreplace-special|, ..., |submatch()|)
cat -n adds line numbers to its input. You can pipe the current file to cat -n and replace the current buffer with what it prints to stdout. Fortunately this convoluted solution is less than 10 characters in vim:
:%!cat -n
Or, if you want just a subselection, visually select the area, and type this:
:!cat -n
That will automatically put the visual selection markers in, and will look like this after you've typed it:
:'<,'>!cat -n
In order to erase the line numbers, I recommend using control-v, which will allow you to visually select a rectangle, you can then delete that rectangle with x.
On a GNU system: with the external nl binary:
:%!nl
With Unix-like environment, you can use cat or awk to generate a line number easily, because vim has a friendly interface with shell, so everything work in vim as well as it does in shell.
From Vim Tip28:
:%!cat -n
or
:%!awk '{print NR,$0}'
But, if you use vim in MS-DOS, of win9x, win2000, you loss these toolkit.
here is a very simple way to archive this only by vim:
fu! LineIt()
exe ":s/^/".line(".")."/"
endf
Or, a sequence composed with alphabet is as easy as above:
exe "s/^/".nr2char(line("."))."/"
You can also use a subst:
:g/^/exe ":s/^/".line(".")."^I/"
You can also only want to print the lines without adding them to the file:
"Sometimes it could be useful especially be editing large source files to print the line numbers out on paper.
To do so you can use the option :set printoptions=number:y to activate and :set printoptions=number:n to deactivate this feature.
If the line number should be printed always, place the line set printoptions=number:y in the vimrc."
First, you can remove the existing line numbers if you need to:
:%s/^[0-9]*//
Then, you can add line numbers. NR refers to the current line number starting at one, so you can do some math on it to get the numbering you want. The following command gives you four digit line numbers:
:%!awk '{print 1000+NR*10,$0}'
The "VisIncr" plugin is good for inserting columns of incrementing numbers in general (or letters, dates, roman numerals etc.). You can control the number format, padding, and so on. So insert a "1" in front of every line (via :s or :g or visual-block insert), highlight that column in visual-block mode, and run one of the commands from the plugin.
If someone wants to put a tab (or some spaces) after inserting the line numbers using the this excellent answer, here's a way. After going into the escape mode, do:
:%s/^/\=line('.').' '/
^ means beginning of a line and %s is the directive for substitution. So, we say that put a line number at the beginning of each line and add 4 spaces to it and then put whatever was the contents of the line before the substitution, and do this for all lines in the file.
This will automatically substitute it. Alternatively, if you want the command to ask for confirmation from you, then do:
:%s/^/\=line('.').' '/igc
P.S: power of vim :)
The best reply is done in a duplicate question.
In summary:
with CTRL-V then G I 0 You can insert a column of zero.
Then select the whole column and increment:
CTRL-V g CTRL-A
See also: https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Making_a_list_of_numbers#Incrementing_selected_numbers