How to substitute for matching delimiters in vi? - vim

I have some text which has matched delimiters (in this case, curly braces, and the text happens to be LaTeX, which is only incidental):
\nb{\vec{n},\vec{y}} \in \vec{z}
What I'd like to do is globally replace \nb{...} with (...), while respecting the nesting of delimiters. I.e., the result should be
(\vec{n},\vec{y}) \in \vec{z}
and not
(\vec{n},\vec{y}} \in \vec{z)
which is what would be produced by :%s/\\nb{\(.*\)}/(\1)/g. Standard regular expressions can't handle matched delimiters, so I wasn't expecting this way to work. Is there some vi-specific trick I can use to do this?

If you have surround.vim installed then the following should do the trick
:set nowrapscan
:let #q="/\\m\\\\nb{/e+1\<cr>cs{)dF\\#q"
gg#q
If you do not:
:set nowrapscan
let #q="/\\m\\\\nb{<cr>dt{yi{\"_ca{()\<esc>\"0P#q"
gg#q
Overview
Create a recursive macro that searches for \nb{, positions the cursor just inside the {, replace the }{'s with ()'s.
Glory of Details
:set nowrapscan this prevents searches from looping back around the file.
:let #q="..." store our macro inside the q register
/\m\nb{/e+1 searches for \nb{ and positions the cursor after the {
cs{) the surround version will just change the surrounding { with )
#q run the macro again
Used " so must escape a few things so they work correctly.
gg#q go to the top of the file and execute the macro in register q
The non surround version varies a bit here
yi{ copy the text inside {'s
"_ca{()<esc> change the text inside and including the {'s and replace with ()
"0P paste what we just copied inside the ()

I would use the following :global command.
:g/\\nb{/norm!/^M%r)[{r(dF\\
Type ^M as Ctrl+V, Enter.

Related

vim - surround text with function call

I want to wrap some code :
myObj.text;
with a function call where the code is passed as an argument.
console.log(myObj.text);
I've thought about using surround.vim to do that but didn't manage to do it.
Any idea if it's possible ? I
With Surround in normal mode:
ysiwfconsole.log<CR>
With Surround in visual mode:
Sfconsole.log<CR>
Without Surround in normal mode:
ciwconsole.log(<C-r>")<Esc>
Without Surround in visual mode:
cconsole.log(<C-r>")<Esc>
But that's not very scalable. A mapping would certainly be more useful since you will almost certainly need to do it often:
xnoremap <key> cconsole.log(<C-r>")<Esc>
nnoremap <key> ciwconsole.log(<C-r>")<Esc>
which brings us back to Surround, which already does that—and more—very elegantly.
I know and use two different ways to accomplish this:
Variant 1:
Select the text you want to wrap in visual mode (hit v followed by whatever movements are appropriate).
Replace that text by hitting c, then type your function call console.log(). (The old text is not gone, it's just moved into a register, from where it will be promptly retrieved in step 3.) Hit <esc> while you are behind the closing parenthese, that should leave you on the ) character.
Paste the replaced text into the parentheses by hitting P (this inserts before the character you are currently on, so right between the ( and the )).
The entire sequence is v<movement>c<functionName>()<esc>P.
Variant 2:
Alternatively to leaving insert mode and pasting from normal mode, you can just as well paste directly from insertion mode by hitting <ctrl>R followed by ".
The entire sequence is v<movement>c<functionName>(<ctrl>R")<esc>.
You can use substitution instruction combined with visual mode
To change bar to foo(bar):
press v and select text you want (plus one more character) to surround with function call (^v$ will select whole text on current line including the newline character at the end)
type :s/\%V.*\%V/foo\(&\)/<CR>
Explanation:
s/a/b/g means 'substitute first match of a with b on current line'
\%V.*\%V matches visual selection without last character
& means 'matched text' (bar in this case)
foo\(&\) gives 'matched text surrounded with foo(...) '
<CR> means 'press enter'
Notes
For this to work you have to visually select also next character after bar (^v$ selects also the newline character at the end, so it's fine)
might be some problems with multiline selections, haven't checked it yet
when I press : in visual mode, it puts '<,'> in command line, but that doesn't interfere with rest of the command (it even prevents substitution, when selected text appears also somewhere earlier on current line) - :'<,'>s/... still works

vim: replace block

Let's say I have this text:
something "something else"
something here "just another quoted block"
I want to substitute "something else" with "just another quoted block", so I do:
/quot<enter> (to jump to second quoted block searching for the string "quot")
yi" (to yank inner text for current quoted block)
?else<enter> (to jump back to the first quoted block wich contains "else")
vi" (to visually select the quoted block)
p (to paste yanked text)
This works, but I would like to know if the two last steps can be replaced by a single one, to avoid visual mode. I know it's not a huge gain keystroke-wise, but I think that the Vim philosophy would encourage what I'm trying to do, and every time I do this my mind keeps asking for this command. :-P
What I tried so far:
r (replace) replaces just one character
c (change) throws me into Insert mode and does not let me paste the text.
"_di"P
Delete inside quotes to the blackhole register; paste last yanked before cursor.
Or
ci"<Ctrl-R>0<ESC>
Change inside quotes to retrieve last yank; leave insert mode.
With my ReplaceWithRegister plugin, the last two steps would be gri". It also offers grr (replace current / [count] lines); though it only saves a little typing, I find this indispensable.
Key stroke wise, j$yi"k then vi"p is actually probably the fastest. However, if you absolutely must go into insert mode you can j$yi"k then "_ci"<C-r>" or ci"<C-r>0. The :help i_CTRL-R operator allows you to put the contents of a register into insert mode.
I usually try to keep it simple, using what I feel is more intuitive with every day commands:
j
yi"
k
ci"
<ESC>
p

Delete lines with highlighted text / delete highlighted text

Does anyone know how to delete:
lines with highlighted text
all highlighted text self
(highlighted text (p.e. after a search) not selected text)
Is there a command which search all highlighted text and delete the line?
(independent which search command or function I used to highlight text)
the g/pattern/d command does not always delete the highlighted text
p.e. /^\(.*\)\(\n\1\)\+$ --> highlight all double lines
but g/^\(.*\)\(\n\1\)\+$/d --> does NOT delete all double lines
Well, you can delete the searched pattern this way:
:%s/<pattern>//gc
And you can delete the whole line with the searched pattern this way:
:g/<pattern>/d
In addition to sixfeetsix' answer:
to delete all lines NOT containing <pattern>, type :g!/<pattern>/d or :v/<pattern>/g
to avoid having to type <pattern> after :g/, type :g/CTRL-r//d which inserts the content of the search register (CTRL-r/ means register /) into your command being typed.
how to delete: 2) all highlighted text self
You could use search-and-replace (substitute) to do this.
It is generally used like this:
:%s/your_search_here/your_replacement_here/gc
More specifically, replace your search results with nothing (to remove them):
:%s/your_search_here//gc
Omit the c at the end to replace all without confirmation.
Type :help :s for more info.
how to delete: 1) lines with highlighted text
To delete whole lines, you could either do a substitute, and just match the whole line with a regular expression (%s/^.*your_search_here.*\n//g), or you could use the multiple repeats (multi-repeat) feature.
It is generally used like this:
:g/your_search_here/[cmd]
More specifically, combine it with the normal command you use to delete a line (d):
:g/your_search_here/d
Type :help :g for more info.
Tips:
An easy way to get your query right before doing your substitute is to do your search in command mode rather than the default mode.
Instead of:
/your_search_here
Type:
:/your_search_here
Then you can go to command mode (:), hit the up key to bring up your last search, and edit the line to convert it to a substitute.
From this SuperUser answer:
You can use gn in version 7.4 onwards (and gN to go backwards). It replaces the v//e trick.
Search forward for the last used search pattern, like with `n`, and start Visual mode to select the match.
See :help gn or this Vimcast for more information.
I guess it's the essentially the same question as this:
Vim: when matching string across multiple lines using \_. in regex, yank command only works for the first line
It looks like a bug in Vim.

How to quickly remove a pair of parentheses, brackets, or braces in Vim?

In Vim, if I have code such as (in Ruby):
anArray << [anElement]
and my cursor is on the first [, I can hop to ] with the % key, and I can delete all the content between the [] pair with d%, but what if I just want to delete the [ and ] leaving all the remaining content between the two. In other words, what's the quickest way to get to:
anArray << anElement
One can take advantage of the text objects that are built in into Vim
(see :help text-objects). The desired edit can be stated as a
sequence of the following three actions.
Cut the text inside the square brackets:
di[
Select the (empty) square brackets:
va[
Alternatively, you can just select the character under the
cursor and the one to the left of it, because the command
from step 1 always puts the cursor on the closing bracket:
vh
Paste the cut text over the selected brackets:
p
Altogether, it gives us the following sequence of Normal-mode commands:
di[va[p
or, when the alternative form of step 2 is used:
di[vhp
ma%x`ax (mark position in register a, go to matching paren, delete char, go to mark a, delete char).
EDIT:
%x``x does the same thing (thanks to #Alok for the tip).
Using the Surround plugin for Vim, you can eliminate surrounding delimiters with ds<delimeter>.
To install it via Vundle plugin, add
Plugin 'tpope/vim-surround'
to your .vimrc file and run :PluginInstall.
If you have issues with the marks pointing to the first char of the line or with using % ...
di[vhp
works as well... It deletes matching [] brackets, when the cursor is anywhere inside. '[' can be replaced by '{' or '(' .
The other answers work fine if you want to delete delimiters one line at a time.
If on the other hand you want to remove a function and it's delimiters from the entire file use:
:%s/function(\(.*\))/\1/g
which replaces function(arguments) with arguments everywhere in the file.
You can use d% while your cursor is on the bracket/parentheses.

How can I insert text in the middle of the line to multiple lines in Vim?

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.

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