All Questions
346
questions
2423
votes
12
answers
1.1m
views
How to replace a character by a newline in Vim
I'm trying to replace each , in the current file by a new line:
:%s/,/\n/g
But it inserts what looks like a ^@ instead of an actual newline. The file is not in DOS mode or anything.
What should I ...
- 336k
549
votes
30
answers
94k
views
In Vim is there a way to delete without putting text in the register?
Using Vim I often want to replace a block of code with a block that I just yanked.
But when I delete the block of code that is to be replaced, that block itself goes into the register which erases ...
- 191k
336
votes
10
answers
384k
views
How can I add a string to the end of each line in Vim?
I want to add * to the end of each line in Vim.
I tried the code unsuccessfully
:%s/\n/*\n/g
- 137k
211
votes
6
answers
111k
views
How to replace a single word under cursor?
How do I replace a word under the cursor in Vim.
So instead of using dw then i then the word and then Esc, is there a simpler combination to replace the word under the cursor?
- 6,846
196
votes
9
answers
39k
views
Case preserving substitute in Vim
Can this can be done in Vim?
What I mean is: searching for 'BadJob'
and replacing with 'GoodJob' would do
the following replacements
'badjob' -> 'goodjob'
'BadJob' -> 'GoodJob'
'...
- 17.5k
150
votes
6
answers
82k
views
How to search and replace globally, starting from the cursor position and wrapping around the end of file, in a single command invocation in Vim?
When I search with the / Normal-mode command:
/\vSEARCHTERM
Vim starts the search from the cursor position and continues downwards, wrapping around to the top. However, when I search and replace ...
- 2,580
146
votes
5
answers
105k
views
Search and replace on specific lines in Vim
I can use
:5,12s/foo/bar/g
to search for foo and replace it by bar between lines 5 and 12. How can I do that only in line 5 and 12 (and not in the lines in between)?
- 14.7k
136
votes
13
answers
57k
views
Search and replace in Vim across all the project files
I'm looking for the best way to do search-and-replace (with confirmation) across all project files in Vim. By "project files" I mean files in the current directory, some of which do not have to be ...
- 7,152
122
votes
9
answers
53k
views
Capitalize first letter of each word in a selection using Vim
In Vim, I know we can use ~ to capitalize a single char (as mentioned in this question), but is there a way to capitalize the first letter of each word in a selection using Vim?
For example, if I ...
- 5,960
122
votes
11
answers
33k
views
Replace word with contents of paste buffer?
I need to do a bunch of word replacements in a file and want to do it with a vi command, not an EX command such as :%s///g.
I know that this is the typical way one replaces the word at the current ...
- 1,733
117
votes
6
answers
63k
views
Find and Replace within selection in `vi`
How do I do a Find and Replace within a selection in vi?
- 58.7k
98
votes
2
answers
56k
views
vim does not find and replace simple phrase that is clearly present
I have a simple vim problem that Google hasn't managed to help me with. Any thoughts are appreciated.
I do the following search and replace:
:s/numnodes/numnodes1/g
On a file containing the ...
- 1,875
98
votes
1
answer
98k
views
How to include forward slash in vi search & replace
I have a file that contains the string usrbin. I want to search for usrbin and replace it with /usr/bin/.
I tried :%s/usrbin/usr/bin/g, but it's showing error E488: Trailing characters.
How do I ...
- 1,081
78
votes
7
answers
20k
views
Perform a non-regex search/replace in vim
When doing search/replace in vim, I almost never need to use regex, so it's a pain to constantly be escaping everything, Is there a way to make it default to not using regex or is there an alternative ...
- 5,847
75
votes
4
answers
52k
views
How to search and replace in current line only?
I see how to search and replace in specific lines, specifying by line number, and how to search and replace using the current line as reference to a number of lines down.
How do I search and replace ...
- 5,874
71
votes
6
answers
77k
views
/ in vi Search and replace?
in vi, search and replace, how do you escape a '/' (forward slash) so that it is correct. Say in a path.
like: /Users/tom/documents/pdfs/
:%s//Users/tom/documents/pdfs//<new text>/g --FAILS (...
- 905
70
votes
2
answers
11k
views
Substitute with contents of register or lines range from elsewhere in file in Vim
I'm using Vim, and I want to substitute some placeholder text with a long string, that spans several lines, which is already written somewhere else in the file.
Is it possible to replace a pattern ...
- 56.2k
68
votes
3
answers
31k
views
Find and replace whole words in vim
To find and replace all instances of a word in vim, I use
%s/word/newword/g
How do I change this so that it only finds instances of "word" that are whole words?
- 54.7k
60
votes
5
answers
20k
views
How to do search & replace with ack in vim?
I am using the Ack plugin in Vim, which helps me to quickly search for strings in my project. However, sometimes I want to replace all or some occurrences of the found strings. You can do some kind of ...
- 1,725
54
votes
4
answers
40k
views
Adding characters at the start and end of each line in a file
What is the best way to add some characters at the start and end of each line? Can it be done using Vim, or some other way?
- 1,582
52
votes
5
answers
23k
views
How to count search results in Vim?
How to find in the text file using Vim how many times specific word repeats.
For example, I want to see how many times word "name" repeats in the code:
"collection": "animals",
"fields": [
...
- 741
51
votes
6
answers
20k
views
Search & replace using quickfix list in Vim
So far I always used EasyGrep for replacing text in multiple files. Unfortunately it is quite slow when a project gets bigger. One thing that seems to be amazingly fast is Ggrep of fugitive.vim that ...
- 16.3k
50
votes
2
answers
12k
views
Vim: Replace selection with default buffer without overwriting the buffer
Here is my problem:
I am in visual mode.
I select text and copy it to the buffer. ((y)ank)
I select another text which I want to replace and paste the buffer. ((p)aste)
Now the second selection ...
- 1,443
49
votes
3
answers
50k
views
Is it possible to use find and replace on a wildcard string in VIM?
For example, I have a bunch of values with a common prefix and postfix, such as:
fooVal1Bar;
fooVal2Bar;
fooVal3Bar;
In this case, all variable names begin and end with foo and end with Bar. I ...
- 3,601
43
votes
7
answers
19k
views
camelCase to underscore in vi(m)
If for some reason I want to selectively convert camelCase named things to being underscore separated in Vim, how could I go about doing so?
Currently I've found that I can do a search /s[a-z][A-Z] ...
- 1,837
40
votes
7
answers
21k
views
How can I delete all lines that do not begin with certain characters?
I need to figure out a regular expression to delete all lines that do not begin with either "+" or "-".
I want to print a paper copy of a large diff file, but it shows 5 or so lines before and after ...
- 4,835
37
votes
2
answers
12k
views
How can I replace a pattern only on lines that do or do not contain another pattern?
Say I have a text containing the words red and blue.
How do I replace occurences of the word blue with the word green only in all lines containing the word red?
Likewise how can I replace blue with ...
- 1,727
37
votes
4
answers
32k
views
How can I include the period (.) in Vim's search and replace command? (replacing .html extensions)?
When I do: /.html Vim looks for html
I would like to replace all the .html with .php
Something like this: :%s/html ext/php ext/g
- 54.4k
35
votes
8
answers
173k
views
How to replace space with comma using sed?
I would like to replace the empty space between each and every field with comma delimiter.Could someone let me know how can I do this.I tried the below command but it doesn't work.thanks.
My command:
...
- 13.4k
33
votes
9
answers
49k
views
Replacing quote marks around strings in Vim?
I have something akin to <Foobar Name='Hello There'/> and need to change the single quotation marks to double quotation marks. I tried :s/\'.*\'/\"\0\" but it ended up producing <Foobar Name="...
- 8,686
33
votes
4
answers
22k
views
Vim Search/Replace, meaning of %s
In Vim you can search/replace text in the following way.
:%s/old/new
What does the %s mean?
- 1,674
32
votes
3
answers
22k
views
Adding Line Break After pattern in VIM
I have a css file and I want to add an empty line after every }.
How can I do this in Vim?
- 3,220
31
votes
5
answers
36k
views
vim: How do I replace a character under my cursor with previously yanked text (more than once)?
Let's say I've yanked 3 characters "foo" into my clipboard by using a visual select + yank, ie: 'vllly'
Then I've moved my cursor to another character (let's call this character x) on line 5 which I'...
- 4,232
31
votes
3
answers
35k
views
How to search/replace special chars?
After a copy-paste from Wikipedia into Vim, I get this:
1 A
2
3 [+] Métier agricole<200e> – 44 P • 2 C
4 [×] Métier de l'ameublement<200e> – 10 P
5 [×] Métier de l'animation<...
- 15.6k
28
votes
5
answers
21k
views
Search and Replace with incremented values in Vim
Lets say I wrote a simple CSS rule like this:
.star_10 {
background: url(stars.png) no-repeat 0 0;
}
And I need 10, so I copied it 9 times.
.star_10 {
background: url(stars.png) no-repeat 0 0;
}...
- 2,459
27
votes
3
answers
7k
views
vim search and replace limited to the highlight in visual block mode
I often have text in columns and need to replace some things without clobbering similar stuff on the same line... a simple example follows:
Suppose I have highlighted the text in grey with vim visual ...
- 42.6k
25
votes
4
answers
14k
views
vim: replace all characters up to a given token
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:
...
- 2,589
24
votes
1
answer
20k
views
How can I search for the dot character using the search command?
I'm trying to use the Search command in Vim:
:Rs/F/T/X
R = range
F = text to find
T = text to replace with
X = options
But, when I want to search for the "." (dot character) I'm getting some ...
- 40.8k
23
votes
3
answers
2k
views
Convert vim / search to search and replace without retyping regular expression
When I perform a search and replace in Vim, I like to use the search function (/regex) first to visually test my regex.
Is there a simple way to bring up the expression I wrote in a search and ...
- 2,705
23
votes
2
answers
18k
views
VIM: how to replace a word
I guess, the problem is pretty common. Let's say, we have a source file and wish to replace some string with another string.
Usually, I use the following command:
:%s/test/testValue/gc
But, what if ...
- 11.7k
22
votes
6
answers
9k
views
How to search and replace with a counter-based expression in Vim?
Is there a way to insert the value from some sort of counter variable in Vim :substitute command?
For instance, to convert this document:
<SomeElement Id="F" ... />
<SomeElement Id=&...
- 58.7k
19
votes
3
answers
10k
views
How to search for a character the displays as "<85>" in Vim
I have a file that was converted from EBCDIC to ASCII. Where there used to be new lines there are now characters that show up as <85> (a symbol representing a single character, not the four ...
16
votes
12
answers
9k
views
What Vim command to use to delete all text after a certain character on every line of a file?
Scenario:
I have a text file that has pipe (as in the | character) delimited data.
Each field of data in the pipe delimited fields can be of variable length, so counting characters won't work (or ...
- 21.9k
16
votes
4
answers
9k
views
How to replace ~ (tilde) in vim
I have a string with a ~ in it and using the expression
Example:
hi~how~are~you
:%s/~/ /g
This doesn't seem to work any ideas?
- 3,704
16
votes
4
answers
5k
views
Vim - Search and replace the results
I'm getting more and more comfortable with Vim after a few months.
BUT, there is only one simple feature I can't get any answer from the web. That is "Search and replace the results". The problem is ...
- 902
16
votes
5
answers
8k
views
Vim Search/replace: what do I need to escape?
I'm trying to search and replace $data['user'] for $data['sessionUser'].
However, no matter what search string I use, I always get a "pattern not found" as the result of it.
So, what would be the ...
- 731
15
votes
8
answers
38k
views
How to remove quotes surrounding the first two columns in Vim?
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. ...
- 21.9k
15
votes
7
answers
7k
views
In Vim how can I search and replace every other match?
Say I have the following file
<block>
<foo val="bar"/>
<foo val="bar"/>
</block>
<block>
<foo val="bar"/>
<foo val="bar"/>
</block>
...
- 901
15
votes
8
answers
8k
views
Deleting / changing searched text in Vim
When I do an interactive search for some pattern, each time I hit n, I get the next result. How do I delete / change each result that I come to?
Ideally, what I'm looking for would work like this: I ...
- 47.3k
15
votes
5
answers
5k
views
Is it possible to disable Replace mode in vim?
Put simply, how can I completely disable Replace mode in vim? I never use Replace mode, but I sometimes end up in it by accident when re-entering Insert Mode. Naturally, I goof up by typing over a few ...
- 901