Is there an easy way to flip code around an equal sign in vi/vim?
Eg: I want to turn this:
value._1 = return_val.delta_clear_flags;
value._2._1 = return_val.delta_inactive_time_ts.tv_sec;
value._2._2 = return_val.delta_inactive_time_ts.tv_nsec;
value._3 = return_val.delta_inactive_distance_km;
(...)
into this:
return_val.delta_clear_flags = value._1;
return_val.delta_inactive_time_ts.tv_sec = value._2._1;
return_val.delta_inactive_time_ts.tv_nsec = value._2._2;
return_val.delta_inactive_distance_km = value._3;
(...)
on A LOT of lines in a file.
I know this seems a little trivial, but I've been running into lots of cases when coding where I've needed to do this in the past, and I've never had a good idea/way to do it that didn't require a lot of typing in vim, or writing a awk script. I would think this would be possible via a one liner in vi.
Explanations of the one-liners is very welcome and will be looked upon highly when I select my accepted answer. :)
Something like this:
:%s/\([^=]*\)\s\+=\s\+\([^;]*\)/\2 = \1
You might have to fiddle with it a bit if you have more complex code than what you have shown in the example.
EDIT: Explanation
We use the s/find/replace comand. The find part gets us this:
longest possible string consisting of anything-but-equal-signs, expressed by [^=]* ...
... followed by one or more spaces, \s\+ (the extra \ in front of + is a vim oddity)
... followed by = and again any number of spaces, =\s\+
... followed by the longest possible string of non-semicolon characters, [^;]*
Then we throw in a couple of capturing parentheses to save the stuff we'll need to construct the replacement string, that's the \(stuff\) syntax
And finally, we use the captured strings in the replace part of the s/find/replace command: that's \1 and \2.
For interest's sake, here's how I did it as a recorded macro:
qq0"+df=xA<BACKSPACE> = <ESC>"+pxi;<ESC>jq
Peforming that on the first line sets the "q" macro to do what's required. Then on each subsequent line you can execute the macro by typing:
#q
or, say you want to apply the macro to the next 10 lines:
10#q
I always find macros easier for a quick switch like this than figuring out the regex, because they're essentially an extension of how I would do it by hand.
Edit: Dan Olson points out in his comment that if you want to then apply the macro to a range of lines, for instance lines 6-100, you can enter the following. I don't know if there's a more concise syntax that doesn't require the ".*" pattern match.
:6,100g/.*/normal #q
Explanation of the macro
qq
start recording in register q
0
go to beginning of line
"+df=
delete up to the '=' and put the text into the '+' register
x
delete extra space
A
go to end of line and enter insert mode
<BACKSPACE> = <ESC>
Delete the semicolon, insert an equals sign and a space
"+p
insert the test copied earlier into register '+'
xi;<ESC>
reinsert the trailing semicolon
j
move down to the next line, ready to reapply the macro
q
stop recording
:%s/^\s*\(.\{-}\)\s*=\s*\(.\{-}\)\s*;\s*$/\2 = \1;/
should work nicely.
:%s/\([^ =]*\)\s*=\s*\([^;]*\);/\2 = \1;/
Related
I'm getting an unusual behavior when I try to delete from end of lines using block selection in vim.
So let's say I have a text as such:
delete this char:x
and this:x
also this:x
and then this:x
lastly this:x
If I want to append y to every line I can:
start block selection with C-v
select all the lines with 4j
go to ends of lines with $
start appending with A
type the desired text y
in order to get:
delete this char:xy
and this:xy
also this:xy
and then this:xy
lastly this:xy
but if I try to delete x in the last step instead of appending I would expect to get:
delete this char:
and this:
also this:
and then this:
lastly this:
although I end up with:
delete this char:
and this:x:
also this:x:
and then this:x:
lastly this:x:
As far as I understand it appends the last char in the first line to all other lines (in this case :) rather than deleting the missing ones (in this case x).
I can do this with macros or substitutes but I don't quite understand the rationale behind such behavior. Is there a way I can do this with block selection?
Have you tried :{range}normal? This should work:
:'<,'>normal $x
(The '<,'> bit is filled in for you when you type :.)
$ C-v 4j x
go to end of line with $
toggle visual block C-v
go down (in your case 4x) 4j
delete that stuff with x
Edit: (reacting on your comment for arbitrary indentation)
That can be done with simple macro. Macros are not so hard as you can think:
start recording a macro, we will name it 'a', so qa
go to the end of line $
delete one character x
go down by one line with j
end our macro q
Now apply our macro: 20#a - will do the same you did while you was recording the macro, 20x.
If I have a small number of lines I typically do Abackspaceesc. Then repeatedly do j. until done. Not the fastest way but easy to remember.
For a large amount of lines I typically visually select the lines via V then do a substitution or a normal command on the range.
:'<,'>s/.$//
:'<,'>norm $x
Note: you do not have to type '<,'>. It will be inserted automatically when you start a command when some text is visually selected.
The substitution command is pretty simple, match the last character (.$) and then replace it with nothing.
The normal command is just how you would delete the last character in normal mode via $x for a single line except it will apply it to each line in the range.
For more help see:
:h range
:h :s
:h :norm
as you said yourself, to achieve your goal, there are other ways, in fact better ways to go. :s or q(macro) or :g/.../norm $x. :s/.$//g is pretty straightforward.
Ctrl-V is not suitable for this job. As for its name: Visual BLOCK. You want to remove the last x, and they (only x) are not in a block.
However if you really want to stick with ctrl-v, you have to do some extra work, to make those 'x' in a block. If you have Align plugin installed, you could :
Select (V) all lines you want to do the trick,
<leader>t:
then your text looks like:
delete this char : x
and this : x
also this : x
and then this : x
lastly this : x
Ctrl-V to remove x, you should know how to do it.
then
:%s/ *:/:/g
to remove padded spaces before ':'
However I don't think it is a good way to go.
Let's say I have the following line of code:
something:somethingElse:anotherThing:woahYetAnotherThing
And I want to replace each : with a ; except the first one, such that the line looks like this:
something:somethingElse;anotherThing;woahYetAnotherThing
Is there a way to do this with the :[range]s/[search]/[replace]/[options] command without using the c option to confirm each replace operation?
As far as I can tell, the smallest range that s acts on is a single line. If this is true, then what is the fastest way to do the above task?
I'm fairly new to vim myself; I think you're right about range being lines-only (not 100% certain), but for this specific example you might try replacing all of the instances with a global flag, and then putting back the first one by omitting the global -- something like :s/:/;/g|s/;/:/.
Note: if the line contains a ; before the first : then this will not work.
Here you go...
:%s/\(:.*\):/\1;/|&|&|&|&
This is a simple regex substitute that takes care of one single not-the-first :.
The & command repeats the last substitute.
The | syntax separates multiple commands on one line. So, each substitute is repeated as many times as there are |& things.
Here is how you could use a single keystroke to do what you want (by mapping capital Q):
map Q :s/:/;/g\|:s/;/:<Enter>j
Every time you press Q the current line will be modified and the cursor will move to the next line.
In other words, you could just keep hitting Q multiple times to edit each successive line.
Explanation:
This will operate globally on the current line:
:s/:/;/g
This will switch the first semi-colon back to a colon:
:s/;/:
The answer by #AlliedEnvy combines these into one statement.
My map command assigns #AlliedEnvy's answer to the capital Q character.
Another approach (what I would probably do if I only had to do this once):
f:;r;;.
Then you can repeatedly press ;. until you reach the end of the line.
(Your choice to replace a semi-colon makes this somewhat comfusing)
Explanation:
f: - go to the first colon
; - go to the next colon (repeat in-line search)
r; - replace the current character with a semi-colon
; - repeat the last in-line search (again)
. - repeat the last command (replace current character with a semi-colon)
Long story short:
fx - moves to the next occurrence of x on the current line
; repeats the last inline search
While the other answers work well for this particular case, here's a more general solution:
Create a visual selection starting from the second element to the end of the line. Then, limit the substitution to the visual area by including \%V:
:'<,'>s/\%V:/;/g
Alternatively, you can use the vis.vim plugin
:'<,'>B s/:/;/g
Consider following text file:
something
something
something = someother thing
other thing = third thing
another thing = forth thing
I want to make it look like this:
something
something
keyword something = someother thing
keyword other thing = third thing
keyword another thing = forth thing
so that, I add keyword to each line, what is contains a equals symbol in it.
Can I do this with global command, or how do you recommend I should do this?
:g/=/s/^/keyword /
or
:g/=/normal ikeyword
Note the space after "keyword"
For this type of problem, it's also quite common to use a solution like:
:%!sed '/=/s/^/keyword /'
I'm not quite sure what you're attempting to accomplish. Your title suggests a common pattern, but I don't see one in your example. So I'll show you both.
Making Changes Among Things With A Common Pattern
You can do search and replace with the following:
:s/<regex you are searching for>/<string to replace with>/g
s/pattern/replacement/ does search & replace, and the extra g will propogate the changes
Multi-Line Edit
Vim also lets you edit multiple lines at once. Say you want to edit the following three lines:
something = someother thing
other thing = third thing
another thing = fourth thing
Put your cursor on the s at the first something line.
Press <ctrl>-v outside of insert mode to go into Visual mode.`
Scroll down to the a on the bottom line. All three starting characters of all 3 lines should be highlighted.
Press A to append or I to enter directly into insert mode and start typing. When you hit escape your changes should reflect! You can also do other commands like y and d, etc.
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.
Say I have the following style of lines in a text file:
"12" "34" "some text "
"56" "78" "some more text"
.
.
.
etc.
I want to be able to remove the quotes surrounding the first two columns. What is the best way to do this with Vim (I'm currently using gVim)?
I figured out how to at least delete the beginning quote of each line by using visual mode and then enter the command '<,'>s!^"!!
I'm wondering if there is a way to select an entire column of text (one character going straight down the file... or more than 1, but in this case I would only want one). If it is possible, then would you be able to apply the x command (delete the character) to the entire column.
There could be better ways to do it. I'm looking for any suggestions.
Update
Just and FYI, I combined a couple of the suggestions. My _vimrc file now has the following line in it:
let #q=':%s/"\([0-9]*\)"/\1/g^M'
(Note: THE ^M is CTRLQ + Enter to emulate pressing the Enter key after running the command)
Now I can use a macro via #q to remove all of the quotes from both number columns in the file.
use visual block commands:
start mode with Ctrl-v
specify a motion, e.g. G (to the end of the file),
or use up / down keys
for the selected block specify an action, e.g. 'd' for delete
For more see
:h visual-mode
Control-V is used for block select. That would let you select things in the same character column.
It seems like you want to remove the quotes around the numbers. For that use,
:%s/"\([0-9]*\)"/\1/g
Here is a list of what patterns you can do with vim.
There is one more (sort of ugly) form that will restrict to 4 replacements per line.
:%s/^\( *\)"\([ 0-9]*\)"\([ 0-9]*\)"\([ 0-9]*\)"/\1\2\3\4/g
And, if you have sed handy, you can try these from the shell too.
head -4 filename.txt | sed 's/pattern/replacement/g'
that will try your command on the first 4 lines of the file.
Say if you want to delete all columns but the first one, the simple and easy way is to input this in Vim:
:%!awk '{print $1}'
Or you want all columns but the first one, you can also do this:
:%!awk '{$1="";$0=$0;$1=$1;print}'
Indeed it requires external tool to accomplish the quest, but awk is installed in Linux and Mac by default, and I think folks with no UNIX-like system experience rarely use Vim in Windows, otherwise you probably known how to get a Windows version of awk.
Although this case was pretty simple to fix with a regex, if you want to do something even a bit more advanced I also recommend recording a macro like Bryan Ward. Also macros come easier to me than remembering which characters need to be escaped in vim's regexes. And macros are nice because you can see your changes take place immediately and work on your line transformation in smaller bits at a time.
So in your case you would have pressed qw to start recording a macro in register w (you can of course use any letter you want). I usually start my macros with a ^ to move to the start of the line so the macro doesn't rely on the location of the cursor. Then you could do a f" to jump to the first ", x to delete it, f" to jump to the next " and x to delete that too. Then q to finish recording.
Instead of making your macro end on the next line I actually as late as today figured out you can just V (visually line select) all lines you want to apply your macro to and execute :normal #w which applies your macro in register w to each visually selected line.
See column editing in vim. It describes column insert, but basically it should work in the same way for removing.
You could also create a macro (q) that deletes the quotes and then drops down to the next line. Then you can run it a bunch of times by telling vi how many times to execute it. So if you store the macro to say the letter m, then you can run 100#m and it will delete the quotes for 100 lines. For some more information on macros:
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Macros
The other solutions are good. You can also try...
:1,$s/^"\(\w\+\)"/\1/gc
For more Vim regex help also see http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Search_patterns.
Start visual-block by Ctrl+v.
Jump at the end and select first two columns by pressing: G, EE.
Type: :s/\%V"//g which would result in the following command:
:'<,'>s/\%V"//g
Press Enter and this will remove all " occurrences in the selected block.
See: Applying substitutes to a visual block at Vim Wikia