Say I have the following line:
|add_test() (| == cursor position)
And want to replace the 'add' with a 'del'.
del|_test()
I can either press X three times and then press i to insert and type del.
What I want is something like 3c or 3r to overwrite just 3 characters.
Both of these don't do what I want, 3c overwrites 3 characters with the same
character, 3r does several other things.
Is there an easy way to do this without manually Xing and inserting the text?
3s, "substitute 3 characters" is the same as c3l. 3cl and c3l should be the same, I don't know why you'd see the same character repeated. I'm also a fan of using t, e.g. ct_ as another poster mentioned, then I don't have to count characters and can just type "del".
I struggled with the "replace a couple of characters" for a few days too; 'r' was great for single characters, R was great for a string of matching length, but I wanted something like the OP is asking for. So, I typed :help x and read for a while, it turns out that the description of s and S are just a couple of pages down from x.
In other words, :help is your friend. Read and learn.
Use c{motion} command:
cf_ - change up to the first '_' (including);
ct_ - change up to the first '_' (excluding);
cw - change the first word;
The word is determined by iskeyword variable. Check it with :set iskeyword? and remove any '_', like that :set iskeyword=#,48-57,192-255.
By the way see :help c and :help motion if you want more.
I think 3cl is what you want. It changes 3 characters to the right. I'd type ct_del<esc>, but that's not what you asked
c3 ('c', '3', space), then type the characters you want to insert. (Or you can use right-arrow or l rather than space.)
Or, as #Mike just said in a comment, R works nicely if the number of characters happens to match the number of characters you're deleting.
Or ct_ to change from the cursor to the next _ character.
Or, as #bloody suggests in a comment, 3s.
If the works have the same length you can use the R command which replaces what you had previously with what you type.
The other answers given use numbers. When the text is longer it's easier to not have to count. For example I often make headlines in markdown files like:
Some super duper long title that I don't want to have to count
double the line with yy pp
Some super duper long title that I don't want to have to count
Some super duper long title that I don't want to have to count
Highlighth the whole line with V
then use r{char} or in this case r= to get:
Some super duper long title that I don't want to have to count
==============================================================
(I added a space above to trip stack overflow's markdown formatting)
Related
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.
Using vim I would like to replace all characters up to a certain one with another character, say a blank space - without affecting the layout/number of characters in the line. Here's an example:
Before:
real(kind=R12), intent(out) :: my_var
After replacing , intent(out) with blanks (i.e. starting from ,, and going up to )):
real(kind=R12) :: my_var
I know about r to replace one character, and about nr to replace n characters, but I would like to know whether I can accomplish my task without first having to count the characters I want to replace.
Thanks a lot for your replies!
Visual mode is probably the shortest way here:
vt:r
v enter visual mode
t: select till :
r (note space after r) replace selected region with spaces.
In command mode type 'df?' to delete up to that (?) character. Then 'i' to go back to insert.
For example if the following sentence is in your view:
The wizard quickly jinxed the gnomes before they vaporized.
and you enter dfs
You will be left with:
before they vaporized.
I know about r to replace one character
Did you know that R will keep you in that replace mode? So you could hit R and then hold Space until you've replaced everything you want.
However, I'd still go with Thor's answer. Visual mode allows you to use the efficient text navigation methods in vim without having to count out characters.
But if you disagree, there's always EasyMotion.
You can use regular expression here (use (.*?) to reference all values up to a token).
For instance:
The regex: (.*?)foo will get rid of everything up to foo.
For example if I have some code like:
foo = bar("abc", "def", true, callback);
Is there a nice command to move true to the 1st or 2nd position leaving the commas intact?
P.S as a bonus my friend want to know if this works in Emacs too.
In Vim if you place the cursor at the start of the first word and do dWWP then it will have the desired effect. Here is a breakdown:
dW delete the current word, including the comma and the following whitespace
W move to the start of the next word
P insert the deleted text before the cursor
This will work if there are further parameters after the pair to be swapped - it will need to be modified if there are only two parameters or you want to swap the last two parameters, since it will paste the text after the closing bracket.
Alternatively you could use a regex substitution:
:%s/(\([^,]\+\),\s*\([^,)]\+\)/(\2, \1/
This will find the first two arguments after the open bracket and swap them.
update:
A search of vim.org found the swap parameters plugin, which should do exactly what you want and can handle situations that either of the above methods cannot.
I don't know the answer for vi, but in Emacs, transpose-sexps (C-M-t) will swap two arguments either side of the cursor. Actually transpose-words (M-t) was my first guess, but that leaves the quotes behind.
You need a transpose emacs command. But its limited to not guessing that its transposing in lists, it only considers text (it can't guess the 1st, 2nd word of list). Try this.
Keep your cursor at after comma of true. Use M-x transpose-words. By default it will transpose with next word from the point. Shortcut is M-t.
You can use C-u 2 M-t for transpose with next second word.
Now coming to your question. If you want to move true, to backward 1 word, use C-u -1 M-t, and for backward 2 words C-u -2 M-t.
Am not a VIM guy. So sorry bout that.
If you want to do this as a refactoring, not just as text manipulation, I'd suggest looking into Xrefactory, a refactoring tool for Emacsen (free for C/Java, commercial for C++).
Transposing previous (Ctrl-t p) and next (Ctrl-t n) argument ... add the
following into your .vimrc file:
map <C-t>p ?,\\|(<CR>wd/,\\|)<CR>?,\\|(<CR>"_dw?,\\|(<CR>a, <C-c>?,<CR>P/,<CR>w
map <C-t>n ?,\\|(<CR>wv/,<CR>d"_dw/\\,\\|)<CR>i, <C-r>"<C-c>?,<CR>?,\\|(<CR>w
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.
I want to search for a string and find the number of occurrences in a file using the vi editor.
THE way is
:%s/pattern//gn
You need the n flag. To count words use:
:%s/\i\+/&/gn
and a particular word:
:%s/the/&/gn
See count-items documentation section.
If you simply type in:
%s/pattern/pattern/g
then the status line will give you the number of matches in vi as well.
:%s/string/string/g
will give the answer.
(similar as Gustavo said, but additionally: )
For any previously search, you can do simply:
:%s///gn
A pattern is not needed, because it is already in the search-register (#/).
"%" - do s/ in the whole file
"g" - search global (with multiple hits in one line)
"n" - prevents any replacement of s/ -- nothing is deleted! nothing must be undone!
(see: :help s_flag for more informations)
(This way, it works perfectly with "Search for visually selected text", as described in vim-wikia tip171)
:g/xxxx/d
This will delete all the lines with pattern, and report how many deleted. Undo to get them back after.
Short answer:
:%s/string-to-be-searched//gn
For learning:
There are 3 modes in VI editor as below
: you are entering from Command to Command-line mode. Now, whatever you write after : is on CLI(Command Line Interface)
%s specifies all lines. Specifying the range as % means do substitution in the entire file. Syntax for all occurrences substitution is :%s/old-text/new-text/g
g specifies all occurrences in the line. With the g flag , you can make the whole line to be substituted. If this g flag is not used then only first occurrence in the line only will be substituted.
n specifies to output number of occurrences
//double slash represents omission of replacement text. Because we just want to find.
Once got the number of occurrences, you can Press N Key to see occurrences one-by-one.
For finding and counting in particular range of line number 1 to 10:
:1,10s/hello//gn
Please note, % for whole file is repleaced by , separated line numbers.
For finding and replacing in particular range of line number 1 to 10:
:1,10s/helo/hello/gn
use
:%s/pattern/\0/g
when pattern string is too long and you don't like to type it all again.
I suggest doing:
Search either with * to do a "bounded search" for what's under the cursor, or do a standard /pattern search.
Use :%s///gn to get the number of occurrences. Or you can use :%s///n to get the number of lines with occurrences.
** I really with I could find a plug-in that would giving messaging of "match N of N1 on N2 lines" with every search, but alas.
Note:
Don't be confused by the tricky wording of the output. The former command might give you something like 4 matches on 3 lines where the latter might give you 3 matches on 3 lines. While technically accurate, the latter is misleading and should say '3 lines match'. So, as you can see, there really is never any need to use the latter ('n' only) form. You get the same info, more clearly, and more by using the 'gn' form.