How can I add line numbers to a range of lines in a file opened in Vim? Not as in :set nu—this just displays line numbers—but actually have them be prepended to each line in the file?
With
:%s/^/\=line('.')/
EDIT: to sum up the comments.
This command can be tweaked as much as you want.
Let's say you want to add numbers in front of lines from a visual selection (V + move), and you want the numbering to start at 42.
:'<,'>s/^/\=(line('.')-line("'<")+42)/
If you want to add a string between the number and the old text from the line, just concatenate (with . in VimL) it to the number-expression:
:'<,'>s/^/\=(line('.')-line("'<")+42).' --> '/
If you need this to sort as text, you may want to zero pad the results, which can be done using printf for 0001, 0002 ... instead of 1, 2... eg:
:%s/^/\=printf('%04d', line('.'))/
Anyway, if you want more information, just open vim help: :h :s and follow the links (|subreplace-special|, ..., |submatch()|)
cat -n adds line numbers to its input. You can pipe the current file to cat -n and replace the current buffer with what it prints to stdout. Fortunately this convoluted solution is less than 10 characters in vim:
:%!cat -n
Or, if you want just a subselection, visually select the area, and type this:
:!cat -n
That will automatically put the visual selection markers in, and will look like this after you've typed it:
:'<,'>!cat -n
In order to erase the line numbers, I recommend using control-v, which will allow you to visually select a rectangle, you can then delete that rectangle with x.
On a GNU system: with the external nl binary:
:%!nl
With Unix-like environment, you can use cat or awk to generate a line number easily, because vim has a friendly interface with shell, so everything work in vim as well as it does in shell.
From Vim Tip28:
:%!cat -n
or
:%!awk '{print NR,$0}'
But, if you use vim in MS-DOS, of win9x, win2000, you loss these toolkit.
here is a very simple way to archive this only by vim:
fu! LineIt()
exe ":s/^/".line(".")."/"
endf
Or, a sequence composed with alphabet is as easy as above:
exe "s/^/".nr2char(line("."))."/"
You can also use a subst:
:g/^/exe ":s/^/".line(".")."^I/"
You can also only want to print the lines without adding them to the file:
"Sometimes it could be useful especially be editing large source files to print the line numbers out on paper.
To do so you can use the option :set printoptions=number:y to activate and :set printoptions=number:n to deactivate this feature.
If the line number should be printed always, place the line set printoptions=number:y in the vimrc."
First, you can remove the existing line numbers if you need to:
:%s/^[0-9]*//
Then, you can add line numbers. NR refers to the current line number starting at one, so you can do some math on it to get the numbering you want. The following command gives you four digit line numbers:
:%!awk '{print 1000+NR*10,$0}'
The "VisIncr" plugin is good for inserting columns of incrementing numbers in general (or letters, dates, roman numerals etc.). You can control the number format, padding, and so on. So insert a "1" in front of every line (via :s or :g or visual-block insert), highlight that column in visual-block mode, and run one of the commands from the plugin.
If someone wants to put a tab (or some spaces) after inserting the line numbers using the this excellent answer, here's a way. After going into the escape mode, do:
:%s/^/\=line('.').' '/
^ means beginning of a line and %s is the directive for substitution. So, we say that put a line number at the beginning of each line and add 4 spaces to it and then put whatever was the contents of the line before the substitution, and do this for all lines in the file.
This will automatically substitute it. Alternatively, if you want the command to ask for confirmation from you, then do:
:%s/^/\=line('.').' '/igc
P.S: power of vim :)
The best reply is done in a duplicate question.
In summary:
with CTRL-V then G I 0 You can insert a column of zero.
Then select the whole column and increment:
CTRL-V g CTRL-A
See also: https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Making_a_list_of_numbers#Incrementing_selected_numbers
Related
I would like to insert at the end of each line the number of alphabetic characters on that line. To do this on one line is easy. I search using :s/\a//gn and get the occurrence of alphabetic characters in the command line and then A and space and enter the number.
My problem arises when I have so many lines that it becomes extremely tedious to do this. I am trying to create a macro but am having difficulty getting command line output into it. Is there a way to do this without resorting to *nix commands? I have access to a *nix box but not all the time.
So if my file had the following content:
abc2d4s
jd4a5ag
jdf7fjf
abdd5ff
I would like the output to look like this:
abc2d4s 5
jd4a5ag 5
jdf7fjf 6
abdd5ff 6
I was thinking if there was a way to get the replace output piped into the register somehow but cannot figure out how to do it, but maybe there is a better way.
You can capture the output of the :s///gn command with :redir, but in this case, I would rather implement the counting via substitute() and :help sub-replace-expression:
:%s/.*/\=submatch(0) . ' ' . len(substitute(submatch(0), '\A', '', 'g'))/
This matches the entire line (.*), then removes all non-alphabetic characters (\A), and appends the length of the result. Note: Works only for ASCII characters (but \a covers only those, anyway)!
this cmd should give you that output:
%s/.*/\=submatch(0).' '.(len(submatch(0))-len(substitute(submatch(0),'\a','','g')))
One way to do that would be to use a simple macro:
:%norm A <C-v><C-r>=col('.')-2<C-v><CR>
which should look like:
:%norm A ^R=col('.')-2^M
where we enter insert mode at the end of each line and insert a space followed by the column number of the last character.
A variant:
:%norm A^R=" ".len(getline('.'))^M
I'm reviewing some logs with Java exception spam. The spam is getting is making it hard to see the other errors.
Is is possible in vim to select a block of text, using visual mode. Delete that block every place it occurs in the file.
If vim can't do it, I know silly question, vim can do everything. What other Unix tools might do it?
Sounds like you are looking for the :global command
:g/pattern/d
The :global command takes the form :g/{pat}/{cmd}. Read it as: run command, {cmd}, on every line matching pattern, {pat}.
You can even supply a range to the :delete (:d for short) command. examples:
:,+3d
:,/end_pattern/d
Put this togehter with the :global command and you can accomplish a bunch. e.g. :g/pat/,/end_pat/d
For more help see:
:h :g
:h :d
:h :range
Vim
To delete all matching lines:
:g/regex/d
To only delete the matches themselves:
:%s/regex//g
In either case, you can copy the visual selection to the command line by yanking it and then inserting it with <C-r>". For example, if your cursor (|) is positioned as follows:
hello wo|rld
Then you can select world with viw, yank the selection with y, and then :g/<C-r>"/d.
sed
To delete all matching lines:
$ sed '/regex/d' file
To only delete the matches themselves:
$ sed 's/regex//g' file
grep
To delete all matching lines:
$ grep -v 'regex' file
grep only operates line-wise, so it's not possible to only delete matches within lines.
you can try this in vim
:g/yourText/ d
Based on our discussion in the comments, I guess a "block" means several complete lines. If the first and last lines are distinctive, then the method you gave in the comments should work. (By "distinctive" I mean that there is no danger that these lines occur anywhere else in your log file.)
For simplifications, I would use "ay$ to yank the first line into register a and "by$ to yank the last line into register b instead of using Visual mode. (I was going to suggest "ayy and "byy, but that wold capture the newlines)
To be on the safe side, I would anchor the patterns: /^{text}$/ just in case the log file contains a line like "Note that {text} marks the start of the Java exception." On the command line, I would use <C-R>a and <C-R>b to paste in the contents of the two registers, as you suggested.
:g/^<C-R>a$/,/^<C-R>b$/d
What if the yanked text includes characters with special meaning for search patterns? To be on the really safe side, I would use the \V (very non-magic) modifier and escape any slashes and backslashes:
:g/\V\^<C-R>=escape(#a, '/\')<CR>\$/,/\V\^<C-R>=escape(#b, '/\')<CR>\$/d
Note that <C-R>= puts you on a fresh command line, and you return to the main one with <CR>.
It is too bad that \V was not available when matchit was written. It has to deal with text from the buffer in a search pattern, much like this.
I have a text file with a list in it:
dateformatfile.ext
dateformatfile.ext
dateformatfile.ext
...
I need to add a padded number to the end of each, like so:
dateformatfile.ext 00001
dateformatfile.ext 00002
dateformatfile.ext 00003
...
There are a lot, so I need to have a command to do this somehow.
Thanks in advance.
Assuming you want to do this for every line in your file, you can use the line number like this:
:execute "% normal A \<C-R>=printf(\"%05d\", line(\".\"))\<CR>"
where
execute(...) runs the string as a command
% normal runs a normal command on every line of the file
A appends to the line
<C-R>= inserts the result of a command
printf("%05d", ...) formats the second parameters as a five-digit number
line(".") gets the number of the current line
<CR> completes the <C-R>= insertion
if your text block is sitting at the beginning of the file. which means the line you want to append "00001" is the first line of your file, try this command, I just simply check the line ending with ext, you could change it to right regex if it is needed:
:%s/ext$/\="ext ".printf("%05d", line("."))/g
if the text block is not at the beginning of the file. You just check the first line (the line you want to append 00001) of the block and get the line number, for example, line number 5:
:let b=5|%s/ext$/\="ext ".printf("%05d", line(".")-b+1)/g
Here is my take.
Position cursor on first line where you want to add the first number.
:let i=0 Define a variable to hold the count.
qm Start to record a macro into register m.
A <C-R>=printf("%05d", i)<CR><ESC> Add a space and the ouput from printf.
:let i+=1 Increment the count for the next macro execution.
q End the recording of the macro.
jVG Visual select the rest of the document where we want to add numbers.
:normal #m Execute the macro to add the numbers to the selected lines.
I think this approach has some advantages:
No ugly escaping necessary.
The count is not tied to the line number. Allowing for offsets.
Using a macro can be easily combined with the :global command. For example:
:g/ext$/ normal #m Execute macro stored in register m on lines ending in ext.
One could very easily do this using awk. The NR variable gives you the record number, and records map to lines unless the RS variable is redefined. So the following:
awk -e '{ print $0 NR }' filename should do the trick. Padding them is an exercise left up to the reader.
I would do this using macros (I like macros :D).
First, let's take care of the numbers (we'll pad them later).
Add manually the number 1 at the end of the first line.
Then record this macro on the first line :
qq - record the macro q
$ - go at the end of the line
F<space> - go backward to the last space
"ay$ - copy till the end of the line in the buffer a
j$ - go at the end of the line below
"ap - copy the buffer content
<ctrl+A> - increment the number
q - stop recording the macro
Now you can apply it a bunch of times with 1000#q (it will stop at the end of the file).
This is not really pretty but it does the job.
For the padding, I would use another ugly trick. First, use a regex to match 3 digits numbers and add a 0 before, then do the same with 2 digits numbers (add two 0 this time) and so on...
vim macros are pretty ugly but they are useful to me when I am too tired to write a oneliner (I should learn awk though). Also, they can help you remember some obscure, yet useful vim shortcuts.
If you have PERL in your environment, you can run a PERL one-liner inside your VIM session.
:%! perl -pe " $count++ ; s/$/$count/"
The caveat is that you might have to use double quotes around your perl script. On my PC, PERL will run if I use single quotes. But I cannot address variables with the dollar sign.
I know there are ways to automatically set the width of text in vim using set textwidth (like Vim 80 column layout concerns). What I am looking for is something similar to = (the indent line command) but to wrap to 80. The use case is sometimes you edit text with textwidth and after joining lines or deleting/adding text it comes out poorly wrapped.
Ideally, this command would completely reorganize the lines I select and chop off long lines while adding to short ones. An example:
long line is long!
short
After running the command (assuming the wrap was 13 cols):
long line is
long! short
If this isn't possible with a true vim command, perhaps there is a command-line program which does this that I can pipe the input to?
After searching I found this reference which has some more options: http://www.cs.swarthmore.edu/help/vim/reformatting.html
Set textwidth to 80 (:set textwidth=80), move to the start of the file (can be done with Ctrl-Home or gg), and type gqG.
gqG formats the text starting from the current position and to the end of the file. It will automatically join consecutive lines when possible. You can place a blank line between two lines if you don't want those two to be joined together.
Michael's solution is the key, but I most often find I want to reformat the rest of the
current paragraph; for this behavior, use gq}.
You can use gq with any movement operators. For example, if you only want to reformat to the end of the current line (i.e. to wrap the line that your cursor is on) you can use gq$
You can also reformat by selecting text in visual mode (using `v and moving) and then typing gq.
There are other options for forcing lines to wrap too.
If you want vim to wrap your lines while you're inserting text in them instead of having to wait till the end to restructure the text, you will find these options useful:
:set textwidth=80
:set wrapmargin=2
(Don't get side-tracked by wrap and linebreak, which only reformat the text displayed on screen, and don't change the text in the buffer)
Thanks to a comment from DonaldSmith I found this, as the textwidth option didn't reformat my long line of text (I was converting playing with hex-to-byte conversions):
:%!fold -w 60
That reformated the whole file (which was one line for me) into lines of length 60.
If you're looking for a non-Vim way, there's always the UNIX commands fmt and par.
Notes:
I can't comment on Unicode, it may or may not behave differently.
#nelstrom has already mentioned using par in his webcast.
Here's how we would use both for your example.
$ echo -e 'long line is long!\nshort' > 3033423.txt
$ cat 3033423.txt
long line is long!
short
$ fmt -w 13 3033423.txt
long line is
long! short
$ par 13gr 3033423.txt
long line is
long! short
To use from inside Vim:
:%! fmt -w 13
:%! par 13gr
You can also set :formatprg to par or fmt and override gq. For more info, call :help formatprg inside Vim.
Almost always I use gq in visual mode. I tell my students it stands for "Gentlemens' Quarterly," a magazine for fastidious people.
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