In vim/gvim I would like to be able to move to the front and end of the current search lookup. Is this possible?
For example, with this file:
A dog and a cat
A hat and a bat
I would like to be able to perform a search, for example /dog\sand and then be able to move from the beginning of the 'dog and' expression to the end and back so that my cursor starts on column 3, under the letter 'd' of the word 'dog' and then moves to column 9 under the letter 'd' or the word 'and'.
The reason I want to be able to do this is so that I can search for an expression and then use the change command, c, combined with a movement command to replace that particular search expression. I don't want to use substitue and replace here, I want to perform this operation using the change command and a movement key.
You are looking for cgn. From :help gn:
Search forward for the last used search pattern, like
with `n`, and start Visual mode to select the match.
If the cursor is on the match, visually selects it.
If an operator is pending, operates on the match.
E.g., "dgn" deletes the text of the next match.
If Visual mode is active, extends the selection
until the end of the next match.
The beauty of this is you can do cgn and then repeat the command with . and, yes, it will do the same operation on the next search pattern match. This becomes extraordinarily useful when you start searching with complicated regular expressions.
Try ths:
/pattern<cr> to place the cursor at the start of search pattern
/pattern/e<cr> to place the cursor at the end of search pattern
You can change to the end of the match with c//e<CR>. And //<CR> will take you to the beginning of the next match. You could probably work out some kind of bindings for those that make sense. For instance I just tried the following, and it seems to work nicely:
:onoremap <silent>m //e<CR>
So that you can say cm for change match. I'm not sure what I would map //<CR> to, though. I tried mapping it to n, and it seemed to work fine. Don't know if that would be a problem for you.
:nnoremap <silent>n //<CR>
Since you know just how many words you're searching for, why not just move there and then back using word movement commands? I.e., "2w" to go to end of current search result, and "2b" to go back.
Related
In a general sense, my question is how do I do something like "dw" or "dd", but instead of deleting characters, I want to over-write with spaces?
E.g. lets say I have text:
first second third
if the cursor is on the "s" in second, I can hit "dw" to get:
first third
but what if I want:
first third
Is there a simple way to do that? An ideal solution would be to use the "d" style syntax (e.g. dw, daw, d$, etc.) but with whitespace replacement instead of deletion.
From the start of the word,
Ctrl-v to enter visual block mode,
e to move to the end of the word (highlighting the word in the process),
r[SPACE] to replace the highlighted characters with spaces.
Because of their very nature (the next character must be consumed), r and R can't work like operators. If you want to replace a motion, visually select it first, and then do r<Space> or r_ or whatever.
In this very specific case:
ver<Space>
or:
viwr<Space>
NOTE: I used ve and viw because the semantics of w are inconsistent so I prefer to avoid it when possible.
How can I find the first occurrence of bar after the next occurence of Foo using one command/search pattern in Vim?
Ex: Suppose I have some text like:
Bar and bar and bar, I'm such a barbarian.
...
Foo: That bar serves German beer.
Bar bar and bar, so much bar.
Foo: Unrelated.
...bla
but then next bar.
How do I jump between the bolded bars?
The first way that came to mind (easy but not repeatable)
You can do something like this:
/Foo/;/bar
but the "last pattern" will be bar so this is not repeatable with n, N, etc. which means that you will have to do it once and then do /<Up><CR>, which may or may not satisfy your needs.
Note that, once you have jumped to the second match, you can do `` to jump back to the first one and `` to jump back to the second one, and so on.
See :help :; and :help ``.
The second way that came to mind (more complicated but repeatable)
With a single pattern, and thus repeatable with n, N, etc., you can do:
/Foo\_.\{-}\zsbar
where…
/Foo matches the next Foo,
\_.\{-} matches any character including EOL, as few as possible,
\zs starts the actual match, discarding what comes before,
which we want to be bar.
See :help \_., :help \{, and :help \zs.
I haven't figured out a way to combine the following two methods, but they answer your two requests independently.
How to find the first occurrence using one command::norm /Foo^M/bar^M
where ^M is not typed directly, you must press ctrl (or in my case ctrl+shift), then press v, then m. ^M means enter/return button, so you're basically doing two separate searches in one line. Because they're separate, doing n or N to move forwards or backwards only moves forward and backwards between bar, whether or not they come after a Foo. Which leads to:
How to move to the next bar that comes after Foo. You can do this by recording a macro. Press q then the letter to store the macro to start recording, then you can do a /Foo search, then a /bar search. Press q again to stop recording. Now you can just do #a where a is the letter you chose, and that will get you to the next bar after the next Foo. You can repeat the command to keep searching forward, or you can create another macro for doing the search backwards.
Is there a simple way (without too many keystrokes), to substitute the next occurrence of a pattern (in the line or in the whole document, both would be interesting), starting from the cursor position?
So far, I've only come up with selecting onwards, going to normal mode, and doing :s/\%Vpattern/rep. It's too cumbersome. Perhaps there's a nice way to select the next occurrance of a pattern, and then one can "change" the selection?
Thanks
You can use the confirm option with your substitution. Use the command
:%s/pattern/replacement/gc
It will take you through each occurrence of the pattern. Type y to replace, n to move on without replacing, and q to quit the search.
You can use gn
Just search for the pattern, using /
Select using gn
Once selected, you can perform any action on it. Like y to copy, c to change etc
:h gn
Can't figure out how to automatically select a regex match in visual mode.
For example, manually, I could search for a word
/word
It lands the cursor on the first character of the match "word".
Then I press v to enter Visual mode, and press llll to select the whole "word".
Now I want to do this by a macro, and I don't know the length of the match ahead of time.
I expected that Vim would automatically define some built-in marks at the beginning and end of the current match, so that I could ` to them. But I couldn't find any information on that.
What I want is to reassign Ctrl+n to a macro to take me to the next match and select it in visual mode, i.e. not just highlight the match. (To parallel how n takes you to the next match.)
If you're wondering why, its because I want to create folds based on regex matches (like Ctrl+n, zf), but I'm sure it will come in handy in other cases too.
//e takes you to the end character of last search.
More info -- :help {offset}.
You can find how to restore old search buffer here.
For the benefit of folks who stumble across this question in the future, vim now has this feature built-in: gn (and its close sibling gN) will jump to the next (respectively, previous) match and visually select it. It can also be used as a motion; e.g. cgn will jump to the next match and change it.
:noremap <C-n> //s<CR>v//e+1<CR>
Edit summary: was //e, but //e+1 worked for me (selected the last character of the match too).
I know that with Vim's substitution command you can specific a range of lines:
:12,24s/search/replace
I want to be able to specify a range with normal searches as well. Something like
:12,24/search
Since that doesn't seem to work (at least on my Vim configuration), does anybody know how to achieve this?
Great answer from akira. But after some digging, I found an alternative. It's not as elegant but easier to type in:
:12,24g/search/
This will give you one annoying prompt but it will end up on the first line within the range containing the sought string.
:help search-range
and then
:help /\%>l
so essentially:
/\%>12l\%<24lsearch
Do you really need line numbers? Another way could be to select the range visually.
select the range using v, V or whatever
press ESC to unselect the range
search using /\%Vwhat_to_search to search for 'what_to_search' in the previously selected range.
This is lesser to type, but not directly what you have asked for ;-)
See :help %V
[EDIT] Great, I have just learned that the range to search in can be changed after doing the search by selecting another range, unselecting this range again by pressing ESC and pressing n to repeat search. Vim is really always good for pleasant surprises.
Keep using the substitution command, but append the gc flags to your original example.
:12,24s/search//gc
From :help search-range
[To search within a range] use the
":substitute" command with the 'c'
flag.
Example:
:.,300s/Pattern//gc
This command will search from the
cursor position until line 300 for
"Pattern". At the match, you can type
'q' to stop, or 'n' to find the next
match.
If there marks say a and b, then the search can be restricted to the region between a and b using
/\%>'a\%<'bSearchText
This can be simplified with a cmap
cmap vmsab /\%>'a\%<'b
cmap vmscd /\%>'c\%<'d
If you would like to search to the end of the file, use $:
:3,$s/pattern//gn
This will search from 3-d line to the end
Using Narrow Region plugin we can open a temporary buffer with the range we need to search or change
:900,1000NarrowRegion
Then we can meke a search
/thing
Or a change and write the buffer back
:%s/this/that/g
:wq