I've just changed my 'completeopt' setting back from:
set completeopt = preview,menuone,longest
to the default:
set completeopt = preview,menuone
After a long while of using it as it was, I have decided that I
prefer having the first entry selected by default.
I do have one annoyance though. I would like to be able to try to
complete, if the match I'm looking for isn't in the list then
discard the suggested completion and revert to my original text.
How is this done?
I seem to remember from a distant past that this behaviour exists
but randomly bashing buttons hasn't proved fruitful and searching
isn't working out for me.
Thanks for any help.
You can always type Ctrl-E to return to the original text.
Furthermore, Ctrl-N/Ctrl-P will eventually cycle back to the original text.
See: :help completion for more details:
When completion is active you can use CTRL-E to stop it and go back to the
originally typed text. The CTRL-E will not be inserted.
Related
I'm using tags in Vim, with tagstack enabled.
I use Ctrl-] to select a tag, Vim gives me three possibilities, I choose the second.
I then return to the original context with :pop.
I'd then like to select the same tag again, but the place I jumped to last time is not on the tagstack, because I only jumped to it, not from it. I know I can use Ctrl-] and select the second of three again, but I'd like the facility to simply go where I went before.
Is this possible?
You can use Control-o to jump to the last place you visited. It is not exactly what you described but effectively you reach the line you want faster.
Also, you can hit 2 Control-t if you want to visit the second option, which seems to skip the choosing part.
Otherwise, it doesn't seem to be possible as you actually lose the information about the tag when you :pop.
I am using vim for quite some time now, but several times per day I accidentally encounter an inconvenience by hitting ESC too early.
Assume I am editing the following file:
I want to change 'house' in this line.
'house' should stay like this.
This 'house' should become 'home'
The other 'house' should also change.
I want to change house to home in all lines except the second one. (In this simple example it would easy to write a :s command and perform the task, but usually the task is more specific and manual replacements are quicker and less error prone.) I navigate to the first occurrence of house, press cw, type hone, and hit ESC. After hitting ESC I realize that by accident I typed the letter n instead of m.
I could navigate to the next occurrence of house and hit . to repeat the faulty replacement. In this case I have to fix all hones and replace the n by m afterwards.
I could fix the mistake immediately, but then I can not repeat the same house->home replacement, since . would repeat the n->m replacement.
All of this would be no problem, if I had spotted the mistake before hitting ESC. My question is, if there is a way to undo leaving the insert mode, such that . will repeat both actions? Or similarly, is there a way to tell . to repeat the last to operations?
(Of course this sounds like recording a macro, but since I end up in this situation by mistake, I have not started a macro recording.)
As far as I am concerned, there's no command history of vim in that you could repeat the last two operations.
However, there's a plugin that could help you accomplish that. It's called the RepeatLast.vim plugin to address this exact requirement. It provides a 2\. key binding. The cost for using that plugin and how the plugin actually works is that... it actually enables macro recording all the time. But if you could live with that, it should deal with this sort of situation pretty fine.
Frequently when I am doing a find and replace in vi I will do it like this:
:%s/find/replace/gc
This gives you the option to skip by pressing n, or replace by pressing y. But, sometimes I will accidentally skip over one in a large file by pressing n when I meant to press y.
How do I go backwards to the previous one and give me a second change?
Essentially, how to I find (search) the other direction temporarily? thanks.
I'm not sure if you would like to interrupt current find-replace operation and resume it again. But if that is acceptable, here is my suggestion:
Start your find-replace the way you mentioned:
:%s/find/replace/gc
After you accidentally skip over a substitution by pressing n, interrupt the search by pressing <ctrl-C>
Press <shift-N> to go back to the previous occurrence of your find term
Run find-replace a little differently while you are at this word: :.,$s/find/replace/gc
Continue the operation
All this functionality works with vim native capabilities without having to install any addon.
Note: The .,$ range specifier indicates to perform :s (substitute) operation over a range of lines that start with current line (indicated by .) and until last line (indicated by $).
Note2: It might be known to you, but reiterating for anyone else who stumbles upon this post searching for something similar - The % range specifier indicates to perform :s (substitute) operation over all lines of currently active buffer.
This is not answer to the question, but a very good alternative. I recently discovered the CtrlSF plugin and it improves the search /replace process dramatically.
Basically, you have the search results in a buffer and you can do all the replacements in this single buffer.
In your scenario, you first do :CtrlSF find, get a buffer with all the matches in all files and then you do /find and move with n over your targets and change them (of course, you can actually change only the first one and then repeat the replacement with .).
If you miss some target, you just hit N to go back to the previous result and replace it.
Seems like you can't back to previous match using this pattern. Appeared bar propose following commands y/n/a/q/l/^E/^Y but no one of them will return backward to previous match.
But you can use little different pattern described bellow:
Type this /pattern replacing pattern with interested word;
Your cursor is navigated to first occurrence, if you don't need to change it press n it will navigates you to the next occurrence;
Since you understand you need to replace a word, do this by typing cw, this command cuts the forward word and turns you to insertion mode;
Type in desired text on the released place and press ESC to switch back to command mode;
Now again press n until desired occurrence;
Since you realize that you need to change an occurrence, just press on . it will repeat previously mentioned actions;
If you want to go back just use N.
How can I undo all changes since opening a buffer? I imagine there may be some form of :earlier that does this.
UPDATE: Many are suggesting solutions for traversing to earlier file writes. This isn't what I asked for. I want to return to the original state the file was in when I originally loaded it into a buffer, no matter how many writes were made since then.
To revert the current buffer to the original state prior to the very
first change recorded in its undo list (see :help undo-tree), one
can use the following two consecutive invocations of the :undo
command:
:u1|u
The first command (:undo 1) reverts to the state of the buffer just
after the very first registered change, while the second command
(:undo) reverts that first change itself.
Starting with version 8.1 (see :helpg Patch 8.0.1441), Vim accepts
the change number 0 as a valid argument to the :undo command,
finally providing a way to refer to the state prior to any registered
changes. This makes it possible to achieve the same effect in
a single-command invocation:
:u0
You can use the
:edit!
command to get into the earliest saved state. See :help edit! for more information.
You can also check something like gundo.vim (can be found here), which displays the whole undo tree graphically, and you can easily jump between points. Then there is the histwin plugin which I did not used yet, but offers similar functionality.
In vim 8.1+ as well as in neovim, you can just use :u0
From the documentation
:u[ndo] {N} Jump to after change number {N}. See |undo-branches|
for the meaning of {N}. {not in Vi}
If you type
:u 1
it appears to go to after the first change; pressing u or typing :u will then go back to the change.
Otherwise, you can use a very large count to :earlier or g-
e.g.
:earlier 100000000 or 100000000g-
If you put this into a mapping/command, it could do any of these without too much trouble.
e.g.
:nnoremap <C-F12> :earlier 100000000<CR>
To access previously saved file status, I think the following work :
:earlier 1f
From the documentation :
:earlier {N}f Go to older text state {N} file writes before.
When changes were made since the last write
":earlier 1f" will revert the text to the state when
it was written. Otherwise it will go to the write
before that.
When at the state of the first file write, or when
the file was not written, ":earlier 1f" will go to
before the first change.
:earlier {N}m Go to older text state about {N} minutes before.
That should help... And even you have {N}h which is about {N} hours before.
A graphic solution:
The Gundo plugin allows visual comparison of changes in the undo history.
Open Gundo's "undo history pane", type G go to the last line, then we can back to the original file.
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.