I'm looking for a command in VI/VIM to search for particular text in the file and grab the whole line and output in either on the screen or separate file. e.g.
This is some line with this _word_ and some other text.
This is some line with this some other text and some other text.
so this would output only the first line..
:redir > output.txt
:g/_word_/p
:redir END
The line will be output to the screen and to output.txt. See :h :redir.
EDIT: I agree with others who suggest using plain old *nix grep if you can. Situations where you might not be able to use grep:
You're searching buffer text that doesn't exist in a file on the filesystem.
You're using Vim-specific regex extensions, like cursor location, column number, marks, etc.
You want do this in a cross-platform way, and grep might not exist on the system you're using.
redir can be useful in these situations.
use the g (global) command:
:g/_word_/y
will yank all lines containing _word_
having mentioned the DOS find command, you probably want to use grep:
grep -h '_word_' * > results
in vi, from command mode
search for _word_
/_word_
yank the line
yy
paste the line
p
Related
I know how to fzf.vim, but I'd like to open from terminal.
Grepping history or viminfo may be achieve thst, but I wonder if there is any smart way.
This is how you can save the list of recent files from vim to a file:
vim -c "call append(0, v:oldfiles)" -c "write vim-oldfiles.tmp" -c exit
Put v:oldfiles (the list of recent files saved in ~/.viminfo) into the first (new and empty at the start) buffer, write the buffer to a file, exit.
Now you can pass the content of file to fzf.
Not exact solution. But you could open a terminal buffer on the lower part of your vim edit like an IDE and use your terminal fzf
However, not sure if this will let you open a file in a new vim tab
I have an zsh autoloaded function called old:
function old(){
vim -c 'redir >> /tmp/oldfiles.txt | silent oldfiles | redir end | q'
sed -i '/NvimTree$/d' /tmp/oldfiles.txt
local fname
fname=$(awk '/home/ && !/man:/ {print $2}' /tmp/oldfiles.txt | fzf) || return
vim "$fname"
\rm /tmp/oldfiles.txt
}
If you're having trouble executing vim on files that have ~ in their path (vim open a new blank file instead of the desired file) because fzf and vim don't expand tilde (~), here's how I do it:
export FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS=$FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS"
--bind 'ctrl-e:execute(vim -c \"execute \\\"edit\\\" expand({})\" >/dev/tty)'
"
It's trial and error, based on this.
Combining some of the other answers, here's a version that does not need a temporary file and writes to stdout (so you can pipe this into another command, or capture the output using $(...)).
vim -e -c "redir >> /dev/fd/100 | for f in v:oldfiles | silent echo substitute(f, \"^\\\\~\", \$HOME, \"g\") | endfor | redir end | q" 100>&1 &>/dev/null
This solution combines elements from other solutions, but with some improvements:
It uses some shell redirection to duplicate stdout to some free fd (100>&1) and then uses /dev/fd/100 to force writing output there. This ensures that vim actually writes to stdout rather than the terminal. Note that this can also be made to work using /dev/fd/1 (but only when omitting redir end for some reason), but then we cannot apply the next point.
It redirects stdout (and for good measure) also stderr to /dev/null, to prevent vim writing some terminal escape codes to stdout on startup, so using a different fd ensures clean output.
It uses vim in "ex" mode (vim -e) to suppress the "Vim: Warning: Output is not to a terminal" output and accompanying delay. [source]
It uses a for-loop to iterate over v:oldfiles to output just the filenames (the oldfiles command used by https://stackoverflow.com/a/70749181/740048 adds line numbers).
It uses a substitute to expand ~ in the filenames returned by vim (making the returned filenames easier to proces. Normally, shells like bash expand ~ in arguments passed to commands, but this happens only for tildes in the command typed, not tildes that result from variables or command substitution. To prevent having to rely on unsafe eval'ing later, better to expand (just) the tildes beforehand.
I also tried using the append / write combo from https://stackoverflow.com/a/60018642/740048, which worked with the /dev/fd/100 trick, but then ended up putting /dev/fd/100 in the list of oldfiles, so I did not use that approach.
I want to create a new file using vi editor from command line and add a string to it multiple times say 100. Using vi -S command.script file.txt is supposed to do the trick where a new file file.txt will be created and the commands given in command.script file can write to this file. My command.script contains
:%100a hello world
:wq
But its's not working, what I am doing wrong?
If you interactively execute :%100a hello world in a Vim session, you'll get E488: Trailing characters. Looking up :help :a:
:{range}a[ppend][!] Insert several lines of text below the specified
line. If the {range} is missing, the text will be
inserted after the current line. [...]
These two commands will keep on asking for lines, until you type a line
containing only a ".".
tells you that the text has to be put in following lines (and concluded by a line with only a . character).
Or did you mean to use the normal mode a command? (That one takes a [count] to multiply; your %100 range is wrong, too!)
You can also use the low-level function append(), repeating the string with repeat().
summary
$append
hello world
[...]
hello world
.
execute "$normal! 100ahello world\<CR>"
" Easier with o instead of a:
$normal! 100ohello world
call append('$', repeat(['hello world'], 100))
non-Vim alternatives
But honestly, if that is your real use case (and not just a simplified toy example), you don't need Vim at all for this. Here's one example for the Bash shell:
$ for i in $(seq 100); do echo "hello world" >> file.txt; done
I tried gedit, nano, vi, leafpad and other text editors , it won't open, I tried cat and other file looking commands, and I ensure you it's a file not a directory!
This type of approach has a lot of misunderstanding because using - as an argument refers to STDIN/STDOUT i.e dev/stdin or dev/stdout .So if you want to open this type of file you have to specify the full location of the file such as ./- .For eg. , if you want to see what is in that file use cat ./-
Both cat < - and ./- command will give you the output
you can use redirection
cat < -file_name
It looks like the rev command doesn't treat - as a special character.
From the man page
The rev utility copies the specified files to standard output, reversing the order of characters in every line.
so
rev - | rev
should show what's in the file in the correct order.
I tried with pico or vi command.pico readme which allowed me open in editor and read the contents.
if you want to open this type of file you have to specify the full location of the file such as ./- .For eg. , if you want to see what is in that file use cat ./-
cat ./- is the syntax that reveals the correct password for bandit the "rev -" reveals something else
I copy and pasted files from finder, into a text file to get the names of the files in a certain directory to a text file. When I open the file the files from each directory are all the same line...
For example: I copy and pasted from the "Hats Directory":
Line1 is:
hats1.jpg^Mhats2.jpg^Mhats3.jpg^M...
In that same text file I copy and pasted files from the "Shoes" directory
Line 2 is:
shoes1.jpg^Mshoes2.jpg^Mshoes3.jpg^M...
I have tried
:%s/^M//
dos2unix
CTRL-V CTRL-M
Neither of them work, am I going about this process the wrong one? Is there a more efficient way to do what I'm trying to do?
A more simple way is using bash truncate tr command.
Just do, tr -d '\r' < inputFile > outputFile to remove all the carriage return characters.
Try this command:
:%s/^M//g
The ^M that you are looking for is ctrl+V Enter
These are old style mac line breaks (a single \r).
Try mac2unix
You could get that list without involving the Finder and without fishy formatting:
:r!ls path/to/dir
See :help :r and :help :!.
So far, I have been manually refactoring code by using the find-and-replace operation
%s:/stringiwanttoreplace/newstring/g
in vim.
But this is a slow and laborious process if I have stringiwanttoreplace in many files inside a specific directory.
My current/typical slow and laborious process involves a grep:-
grep -rn "stringiwanttoreplace" .
in my terminal to reveal all the locations/filenames where stringiwanttoreplace are; and now that I know which files contain stringiwanttoreplace, I will open each file one-by-one to perform the find-and-replace operation in each file.
Is there a more efficient workflow (in vim) to get this done?
CLARIFICATION: I would prefer a vim-based solution instead of a bash script/one-liner.
Here's the full sequence of commands that I would use:
/stringiwanttoreplace
:vimgrep /<c-r>// **
:Qargs
:argdo %s//newstring/g
:argdo update
In the first line, we search for the target pattern. That populates the last search pattern register (:help quote/), which means that we won't have to type it out in full again.
The :vimgrep command searches the entire project for the specified pattern. Type <c-r>/ as ctlr+r followed by / - this inserts the contents of the last search pattern register onto the command line. The first and last / symbols are delimiters for the search field. The trailing ** tells Vim to look inside every file and directory below the current directory.
At this point, the quickfix list will be populated with search matches from all matching files. :Qargs is a custom command, which populates the argument list with all of the files listed in the quickfix list. Here's the implementation:
command! -nargs=0 -bar Qargs execute 'args ' . QuickfixFilenames()
function! QuickfixFilenames()
" Building a hash ensures we get each buffer only once
let buffer_numbers = {}
for quickfix_item in getqflist()
let buffer_numbers[quickfix_item['bufnr']] = bufname(quickfix_item['bufnr'])
endfor
return join(values(buffer_numbers))
endfunction
Add that to your vimrc file.
Having run :Qargs, our argument list should now contain all of the files that include our target string. So we can run the substitution command with :argdo, to execute the command in each file. We can leave the search field of the substitution command blank, and it will automatically use the most recent search pattern. If you want, you could include the c flag when you run the substitution command, then you'll be prompted for confirmation.
Finally, the :argdo update command saves each file that was changed.
As #Peter Rincker pointed out, you should ensure that Vim's 'hidden' option is enabled, otherwise it will raise an error when you try to switch to another buffer before writing any changes to the active buffer.
Also, note that the last 3 commands can be executed in a single command line, by separating them with a pipe character.
:Qargs | argdo %s//replacement/gc | update
The :Qargs command is pinched from this answer (by me), which in turn was inspired by this answer by DrAl. A very similar solution was posted by #ib, which suggests to me that Vim should really implement something like :quickfixdo natively.
If you really want to do it in Vim you can follow the suggestions here.
You can call this from within Vim (:!find ...) but you don't need to:
find . -type f | xargs sed -i 's/stringiwanttoreplace/newstring/g'
Fine-tune the file selection with the dozens of parameters described in
man find
(e.g., replace only in HTML files: -name \*.html)
This solution will try to attempt the replacement in all files. You can filter that through grep before, but that is just doing twice the work for no gain.
By the way: sed uses almost the same syntax for regular expressions as Vim (stemming from the same history).
You could open all the files and type
:bufdo :s/stringiwanttoreplace/newstring/g
It performs the search/replace in all your buffers.
You don't need vim to do this, you can use command line tools. Using sed in a loop on the list of files to do this for you automatically. Something like this:
for each in `grep -l "stringiwanttoreplace" *` ;
do
cat $each | sed -e "s/stringiwanttoreplace/newstring/g" > $each
; done
vim7 has recursive grep built-in
:vimgrep /pattern/[j][g] file file1 file2 ... fileN
the result will be shown in a quickfix-window (:help quickfix)
to do the search recursively use the **-wildcard like
**/*.c to search through the current folder and recursively through all subdirectories.