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
Related
I'm trying to convert multiple instances of Unicode codes to their corresponding characters.
I have some text with this format:
U+00A9
And I want to generate the following next to it:
©
I have tried to select the code in visual mode and use the selection range '<,'> in command mode as input for i_CTRL_V but I don't know how to use special keys on a command.
I haven't found anything useful in the manual with :help command-mode . I could solve this problem using other tools but I want to improve my vim knowledge. Any hint is appreciated.
Edit:
As #m_mlvx has pointed out my goal is to visually select, then run some command that looks up the Unicode and does the substitution. Manually input a substitution like :s/U+00A9/U+00A9 ©/g is not what I'm interested in as it would require manually typing each of the special characters on every substitution.
Any hint is appreciated.
Here are a whole lot of them…
:help i_ctrl-v is about insert mode and ranges matter in command-line mode so :help command-mode is totally irrelevant.
When they work on text, Ex commands only work on lines, not arbitrary text. This makes ranges like '<,'> irrelevant in this case.
After carefully reading :help i_ctrl-v_digit, linked from :help i_ctrl-v, we can conclude that it is supposed to be used:
with a lowercase u,
without the +,
without worrying about the case of the value.
So both of these should be correct:
<C-v>u00a9
<C-v>u00A9
But your input is U+00A9 so, even if you somehow manage to "capture" that U+00A9, you won't be able to use it as-is: it must be sanitized first. I would go with a substitution but, depending on how you want to use that value in the end, there are probably dozens of methods:
substitute('U+00A9', '\(\a\)+\(.*\)', '\L\1\2', '')
Explanation:
\(\a\) captures an alphabetic character.
+ matches a literal +.
\(.*\) captures the rest.
\L lowercases everything that comes after it.
\1\2 reuses the two capture groups above.
From there, we can imagine a substitution-based method. Assuming "And I want to generate the following next to it" means that you want to obtain:
U+00A9©
you could do:
v<motion>
y
:call feedkeys("'>a\<C-v>" . substitute(#", '\(\a\)+\(.*\)', '\L\1\2', '') . "\<Esc>")<CR>
Explanation:
v<motion> visually selects the text covered by <motion>.
y yanks it to the "unnamed register" #".
:help feedkeys() is used as low-level way to send a complex series of characters to Vim's input queue. It allows us to build the macro programatically before executing it.
'> moves the cursor to the end of the visual selection.
a starts insert mode after the cursor.
<C-v> + the output of the substitution inserts the appropriate character.
That snippet begs for being turned into a mapping, though.
In case you would like to just convert unicodes to corresponding characters, you could use such nr2char function:
:%s/U+\(\x\{4\}\)/\=nr2char('0x'.submatch(1))/g
Brief explanation
U+\(\x\{4\}\) - search for a specific pattern (U+ and four hexadecimal characters which are stored in group 1)
\= - substitute with result of expression
'0x'.submatch(1) - append 0x to our group (U+00A9 -> 0x00A9)
In case you would like to have unicode character next to text you need to modify slightly right side (use submatch(0) to get full match and . to append)
In case someone wonders how to compose the substitution command:
'<,'>s/\<[uU]+\(\x\+\)\>/\=submatch(0)..' '..nr2char(str2nr(submatch(1), 16), 1)/g
The regex is:
word start
Letter "U" or "u"
Literal "plus"
One or more hex digits (put into "capture group")
word end
Then substituted by (:h sub-replace-expression) concatenation of:
the whole matched string
single space
character by UTF-8 hex code taken from "capture group"
This is to be executed in Visual/command mode and works over selected line range.
Say I have a line that looks like this:
(Type)obj.method());
Is there a motion that will go to the last of a specific character on a line? I'd like to do
^c (motion to ')' character) (insert text) <Esc>
and transform that line to
obj.otherMethod());
I know I can use #f or #t, but I'd rather not count the parens.
As I understand your question, you don't just want to go to the last instance of a character, which you could achieve by going to the end of the line and searching backward. You want to clear text from your current caret position to the last instance of a character, right?
I'd typically use a pattern search to complete a motion to a desired character when there may be n of the same character in between. In your example, you can clear from the current caret position to the last ) by using c/);Enter, since only the last instance of o is followed by ;. You could precede this with a v instead of c, for example, if you wanted to select everything in between.
Using the same example, you could move to the 3rd o with /odEnter.
It may seem tedious at first, but in practice you are probably looking directly at the spot where you want be, so you can already see the additional characters you need and you only need to increase you specificity until you get the match, and you'll have immediate visual feedback as long as you have set incsearch.
Note: If your line did not have a semicolon at the end, you could move to the last paren by using )\n to search for the next ) followed by a line break.
You could use visual mode:
v$F)c
But in this case you're really just inserting some new text and changing the case:
f.aotherEscl~
I sometimes need to write the whole alphabet abcd…z and I hate typing it letter by letter in Vim's insert mode. Does there exist any method to do this more efficiently?
I know about the ga command which gives me the ascii code of the character where the cursor is … but don't know anything about how to mix it with my standard solution to type numbers from 1 to (for example) 5000: a1ESCqqyyp^Aq4998#q …
Using set nrformats+=alpha:
ia<Esc>qqylp<C-a>q24#q
Step by step:
ia<Esc> " Start with 'a'
qqylp<C-a>q " #q will duplicate the last character and increment it
24#q " Append c..z
If your shell does brace expansion this is a pretty elegant solution:
:r !printf '\%s' {a..z}
:read! reads the output of an external command into the current buffer. In this case, it reads the output of the shell's printf applied to {a..z} after it's been expanded by the shell.
How about this command:
:put =join(map(range(char2nr('a'),char2nr('z')),'nr2char(v:val)'),'')
Collect the ASCII values of the characters in the range from a to z, then map them over the nr2char() function and insert the result into the current buffer with :put =.
When you leave out the enclosing join( … ,'') you get the characters on a separate line each.
See
:h nr2char(),
:h char2nr(),
:h :put,
and look up range(), map(), join() and friends in the list-functions table.
First, set nrformats+=alpha.
Then:
ia<ESC>Y25p<CTRL-V>}g<CTRL-A>k26gJ
Which means:
ia insert the initial a
Y25p yank the a and duplicate it on 25 lines
<CTRL-V> go into visual block mode
} go to the last character at the end of the current paragraph
g<CTRL-A> incrementally increase each alphabetic character (see help v_g_CTRL-A)
k go up one line
26gJ join 26 lines without inserting or removing any spaces
Which leads to:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
I have found a shorter solution (you don't need to change nrformats beforehand) while solving http://www.vimgolf.com/challenges/5ebe8a63d8085e000c2f5bd5
iabcdefghijklm<Esc>yiwg??P
which means:
iabcdefghijklm<Esc> insert first half of the alphabet
yiw copy it
g?? ROT13 encode (shift by 13 letters) to get the second half
P paste the first half
You might try using Vim abbreviations or a full-fledged snippet manager plugin like UltiSnips. It might take a few moments to set up, and you'd have to type that alphabet one more time to define it as an abbreviation or snippet, but after that you'd be able to insert the alphabet or any other common chunk of text much more easily.
I am trying to use vim properly - to aid me I've mapped my arrow keys to "" so that I am forced to use {hjlk} to move around.
This is causing me a problem when I want to just surround a character with spaces, eg:
"2+3" is better formatted "2 + 3"
Previously I would have put my cursor over the + and typed:
i[space][arrow-right][space][Esc]
That's 5 presses.
To do this without the arrow I seem to need to put the cursor over the + and go:
i[space][Esc]lli[space][Esc]
That's 8 presses.
I can convert the "li" into an "a" which reduces it to 7 presses:
i[space][Esc]la[space][Esc]
Short of writing this into a macro is there a better way of doing it? Is there some magic vim command which will allow me to do it in less than even 5 presses - and some way to generalise it so that I can do it to entire words or symbols, eg if I want to convert 3==4 to 3 == 4?
Personally, I think it makes most sense to destroy what you want to surround, and then repaste it.
c w "" ESC P
Obviously, you can replace both the object and the quotes with whatever you like. To change just one character + to be [space]+[space], you would do
s [space] [space] ESC P
on the +
The first thing that jumps to mind after reading just the title is surround.vim which is an excellent script to do all kinds of useful things along the lines of what you've described.
To solve your specific problem, I would probably position the cursor on the + and:
s[space]+[space][esc]
To change 3==4 into 3 == 4, I might position the cursor on the first =, and:
i[space][esc]ww.
i have been wondering about this as well. i tried with surround.vim, but the naive approach
S<space>
(after making a visual selection) does not work since the space is already taken up as a modifier for adding space to other surrounding character pairs. S<space><cr> adds a ^M in the output. Ss almost works but inserts a space only before.
after asking at tpope/surround.vim on github:
S<space><space>
in visual mode works. alternatively, from normal mode, ysl<space><space> works for a single character
Hah! I've been trying to figure out how to surround a block in spaces for quite a while and I finally found the right combination.
Using surround.vim you say surround selector space space.
So for this specific case I would use visual mode (a good trick for operating on single characters under the cursor BTW) thus: "vs " <- four key presses!
I also have a habit of typing things like argument lists without spaces. With this technique you can just navigate to the second argument using w and say "vws " to visually select a word and surround with spaces.
I prefer visual select mode generally. Also the alternate surround syntax "ysw " excludes the word final comma that is caught by "vw".
You could create a macro with one of the described actions and call it everytime you need it (Like amphetamachine proposed while I was writing) or you could simply search & replace:
:%s/\(\d\)\(+\|-\)\(\d\)/\1 \2 \3/g
You probably have to execute this command two times because it will only find every second occurence of +/-.
EDIT:
This will replace everything without the need to be called twice:
:%s/\d\#<=+\|-\d\#=/ \0 /g
Try positioning your cursor over the '+' and typing this:
q1i[space][right arrow][space][left arrow][esc]q
This will record a quick macro in slot 1 that you can re-use whenever you feel like it, that will surround the character under the cursor with spaces. You can re-call it with #1.
There is also the more versatile one:
q1ea[space][esc]bi[space][right arrow][esc]q
Which will surround the word under the cursor ("==" counts as a word) with spaces when you hit #1.
You could set up a mapping like this (press enter in visual mode to wrap spaces):
:vnoremap <CR> <ESC>`<i<SPACE><ESC>`>la<SPACE><ESC>h
This method allows you to use . to repeat the command at the next +.
Put your cursor over the + and type:
s[SPACE][CTRL-R]"[SPACE][ESC]
I know this is and old thread, but this might be useful to someone. I've found that the map (map it to anything else you want!)
noremap <leader>ss diwi<SPACE><C-R>"<SPACE><ESC>B
works ok both for turning 'a+b' into 'a + b' (when used over the '+' char) and for turning 'a==b' into 'a == b' (when used over either the first or the second '=' sign).
I hope it's useful to someone.
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.