usr_12.txt (12853B)
1 *usr_12.txt* Nvim 2 3 4 VIM USER MANUAL by Bram Moolenaar 5 6 7 Clever tricks 8 9 10 By combining several commands you can make Vim do nearly everything. In this 11 chapter a number of useful combinations will be presented. This uses the 12 commands introduced in the previous chapters and a few more. 13 14 |12.1| Replace a word 15 |12.2| Change "Last, First" to "First Last" 16 |12.3| Sort a list 17 |12.4| Reverse line order 18 |12.5| Count words 19 |12.6| Find a man page 20 |12.7| Trim blanks 21 |12.8| Find where a word is used 22 23 Next chapter: |usr_20.txt| Typing command-line commands quickly 24 Previous chapter: |usr_11.txt| Recovering from a crash 25 Table of contents: |usr_toc.txt| 26 27 ============================================================================== 28 *12.1* Replace a word 29 30 The substitute command can be used to replace all occurrences of a word with 31 another word: > 32 33 :%s/four/4/g 34 35 The "%" range means to replace in all lines. The "g" flag at the end causes 36 all words in a line to be replaced. 37 This will not do the right thing if your file also contains "thirtyfour". 38 It would be replaced with "thirty4". To avoid this, use the "\<" item to 39 match the start of a word: > 40 41 :%s/\<four/4/g 42 43 Obviously, this still goes wrong on "fourteen". Use "\>" to match the end of 44 a word: > 45 46 :%s/\<four\>/4/g 47 48 If you are programming, you might want to replace "four" in comments, but not 49 in the code. Since this is difficult to specify, add the "c" flag to have the 50 substitute command prompt you for each replacement: > 51 52 53 :%s/\<four\>/4/gc 54 55 56 REPLACING IN SEVERAL FILES 57 58 Suppose you want to replace a word in more than one file. You could edit each 59 file and type the command manually. It's a lot faster to use record and 60 playback. 61 Let's assume you have a directory with C++ files, all ending in ".cpp". 62 There is a function called "GetResp" that you want to rename to "GetAnswer". 63 64 vim `*.cpp` Start Vim, defining the argument list to 65 contain all the C++ files. You are now in the 66 first file. 67 qq Start recording into the q register 68 :%s/\<GetResp\>/GetAnswer/g 69 Do the replacements in the first file. 70 :wnext Write this file and move to the next one. 71 q Stop recording. 72 @q Execute the q register. This will replay the 73 substitution and ":wnext". You can verify 74 that this doesn't produce an error message. 75 999@q Execute the q register on the remaining files. 76 77 At the last file you will get an error message, because ":wnext" cannot move 78 to the next file. This stops the execution, and everything is done. 79 80 Note: 81 When playing back a recorded sequence, an error stops the execution. 82 Therefore, make sure you don't get an error message when recording. 83 84 There is one catch: If one of the .cpp files does not contain the word 85 "GetResp", you will get an error and replacing will stop. To avoid this, add 86 the "e" flag to the substitute command: > 87 88 :%s/\<GetResp\>/GetAnswer/ge 89 90 The "e" flag tells ":substitute" that not finding a match is not an error. 91 92 ============================================================================== 93 *12.2* Change "Last, First" to "First Last" 94 95 You have a list of names in this form: 96 97 Doe, John ~ 98 Smith, Peter ~ 99 100 You want to change that to: 101 102 John Doe ~ 103 Peter Smith ~ 104 105 This can be done with just one command: > 106 107 :%s/\([^,]*\), \(.*\)/\2 \1/ 108 109 Let's break this down in parts. Obviously it starts with a substitute 110 command. The "%" is the line range, which stands for the whole file. Thus 111 the substitution is done in every line in the file. 112 The arguments for the substitute command are "/from/to/". The slashes 113 separate the "from" pattern and the "to" string. This is what the "from" 114 pattern contains: > 115 \([^,]*\), \(.*\) 116 < 117 The first part between \( \) matches "Last" \( \) 118 match anything but a comma [^,] 119 any number of times * 120 matches ", " literally , 121 The second part between \( \) matches "First" \( \) 122 any character . 123 any number of times * 124 125 In the "to" part we have "\2" and "\1". These are called backreferences. 126 They refer to the text matched by the "\( \)" parts in the pattern. "\2" 127 refers to the text matched by the second "\( \)", which is the "First" name. 128 "\1" refers to the first "\( \)", which is the "Last" name. 129 You can use up to nine backreferences in the "to" part of a substitute 130 command. "\0" stands for the whole matched pattern. There are a few more 131 special items in a substitute command, see |sub-replace-special|. 132 133 ============================================================================== 134 *12.3* Sort a list 135 136 In a Makefile you often have a list of files. For example: 137 138 OBJS = \ ~ 139 version.o \ ~ 140 pch.o \ ~ 141 getopt.o \ ~ 142 util.o \ ~ 143 getopt1.o \ ~ 144 inp.o \ ~ 145 patch.o \ ~ 146 backup.o ~ 147 148 To sort this list, filter the text through the external sort command: > 149 150 /^OBJS 151 j 152 :.,/^$/-1!sort 153 154 This goes to the first line, where "OBJS" is the first thing in the line. 155 Then it goes one line down and filters the lines until the next empty line. 156 You could also select the lines in Visual mode and then use "!sort". That's 157 easier to type, but more work when there are many lines. 158 The result is this: 159 160 OBJS = \ ~ 161 backup.o ~ 162 getopt.o \ ~ 163 getopt1.o \ ~ 164 inp.o \ ~ 165 patch.o \ ~ 166 pch.o \ ~ 167 util.o \ ~ 168 version.o \ ~ 169 170 171 Notice that a backslash at the end of each line is used to indicate the line 172 continues. After sorting, this is wrong! The "backup.o" line that was at 173 the end didn't have a backslash. Now that it sorts to another place, it 174 must have a backslash. 175 The simplest solution is to add the backslash with "A \<Esc>". You can 176 keep the backslash in the last line, if you make sure an empty line comes 177 after it. That way you don't have this problem again. 178 179 ============================================================================== 180 *12.4* Reverse line order 181 182 The |:global| command can be combined with the |:move| command to move all the 183 lines before the first line, resulting in a reversed file. The command is: > 184 185 :global/^/move 0 186 187 Abbreviated: > 188 189 :g/^/m 0 190 191 The "^" regular expression matches the beginning of the line (even if the line 192 is blank). The |:move| command moves the matching line to after the imaginary 193 zeroth line, so the current matching line becomes the first line of the file. 194 As the |:global| command is not confused by the changing line numbering, 195 |:global| proceeds to match all remaining lines of the file and puts each as 196 the first. 197 198 This also works on a range of lines. First move to above the first line and 199 mark it with "mt". Then move the cursor to the last line in the range and 200 type: > 201 202 :'t+1,.g/^/m 't 203 204 ============================================================================== 205 *12.5* Count words 206 207 Sometimes you have to write a text with a maximum number of words. Vim can 208 count the words for you. 209 When the whole file is what you want to count the words in, use this 210 command: > 211 212 g CTRL-G 213 214 Do not type a space after the g, this is just used here to make the command 215 easy to read. 216 The output looks like this: 217 218 Col 1 of 0; Line 141 of 157; Word 748 of 774; Byte 4489 of 4976 ~ 219 220 You can see on which word you are (748), and the total number of words in the 221 file (774). 222 223 When the text is only part of a file, you could move to the start of the text, 224 type "g CTRL-G", move to the end of the text, type "g CTRL-G" again, and then 225 use your brain to compute the difference in the word position. That's a good 226 exercise, but there is an easier way. With Visual mode, select the text you 227 want to count words in. Then type g CTRL-G. The result: 228 229 Selected 5 of 293 Lines; 70 of 1884 Words; 359 of 10928 Bytes ~ 230 231 For other ways to count words, lines and other items, see |count-items|. 232 233 ============================================================================== 234 *12.6* Find a man page *find-manpage* 235 236 While editing a shell script or C program, you are using a command or function 237 that you want to find the man page for (this is on Unix). Let's first use a 238 simple way: Move the cursor to the word you want to find help on and press > 239 240 K 241 242 Nvim will run |:Man| on the word. If the man page is found, it is displayed. 243 You can also use the |:Man| command to open a window on a man page: > 244 245 :Man csh 246 247 You can scroll around and the text is highlighted. This allows you to find 248 the help you were looking for. Use CTRL-W w to jump to the window with the 249 text you were working on. 250 To find a man page in a specific section, put the section number first. 251 For example, to look in section 3 for "echo": > 252 253 :Man 3 echo 254 255 To jump to another man page, which is in the text with the typical form 256 "word(1)", press CTRL-] on it. Further ":Man" commands will use the same 257 window. 258 259 To display a man page for the word under the cursor, use this: > 260 261 K 262 263 For example, you want to know the return value of "strstr()" while editing 264 this line: 265 266 if ( strstr (input, "aap") == ) ~ 267 268 Move the cursor to somewhere on "strstr" and type "K". A window will open 269 to display the man page for strstr(). 270 271 ============================================================================== 272 *12.7* Trim blanks 273 274 Some people find spaces and tabs at the end of a line useless, wasteful, and 275 ugly. To remove whitespace at the end of every line, execute the following 276 command: > 277 278 :%s/\s\+$// 279 280 The line range "%" is used, thus this works on the whole file. The pattern 281 that the ":substitute" command matches with is "\s\+$". This finds white 282 space characters (\s), 1 or more of them (\+), before the end-of-line ($). 283 Later will be explained how you write patterns like this, see |usr_27.txt|. 284 The "to" part of the substitute command is empty: "//". Thus it replaces 285 with nothing, effectively deleting the matched white space. 286 287 Another wasteful use of spaces is placing them before a tab. Often these can 288 be deleted without changing the amount of white space. But not always! 289 Therefore, you can best do this manually. Use this search command: > 290 291 / 292 293 You cannot see it, but there is a space before a tab in this command. Thus 294 it's "/<Space><Tab>". Now use "x" to delete the space and check that the 295 amount of white space doesn't change. You might have to insert a tab if it 296 does change. Type "n" to find the next match. Repeat this until no more 297 matches can be found. 298 299 ============================================================================== 300 *12.8* Find where a word is used 301 302 If you are a Unix user, you can use a combination of Vim and the grep command 303 to edit all the files that contain a given word. This is extremely useful if 304 you are working on a program and want to view or edit all the files that 305 contain a specific variable. 306 For example, suppose you want to edit all the C program files that contain 307 the word "frame_counter". To do this you use the command: > 308 309 vim `grep -l frame_counter *.c` 310 311 Let's look at this command in detail. The grep command searches through a set 312 of files for a given word. Because the -l argument is specified, the command 313 will only list the files containing the word and not print the matching lines. 314 The word it is searching for is "frame_counter". Actually, this can be any 315 regular expression. (Note: What grep uses for regular expressions is not 316 exactly the same as what Vim uses.) 317 The entire command is enclosed in backticks (`). This tells the Unix shell 318 to run this command and pretend that the results were typed on the command 319 line. So what happens is that the grep command is run and produces a list of 320 files, these files are put on the Vim command line. This results in Vim 321 editing the file list that is the output of grep. You can then use commands 322 like ":next" and ":first" to browse through the files. 323 324 325 FINDING EACH LINE 326 327 The above command only finds the files in which the word is found. You still 328 have to find the word within the files. 329 Vim has a built-in command that you can use to search a set of files for a 330 given string. If you want to find all occurrences of "error_string" in all C 331 program files, for example, enter the following command: > 332 333 :grep error_string *.c 334 335 This causes Vim to search for the string "error_string" in all the specified 336 files (`*.c`). The editor will now open the first file where a match is found 337 and position the cursor on the first matching line. To go to the next 338 matching line (no matter in what file it is), use the ":cnext" command. To go 339 to the previous match, use the ":cprev" command. Use ":clist" to see all the 340 matches and where they are. 341 The ":grep" command uses the external commands grep (on Unix) or findstr 342 (on Windows). You can change this by setting the option 'grepprg'. 343 344 ============================================================================== 345 346 Next chapter: |usr_20.txt| Typing command-line commands quickly 347 348 Copyright: see |manual-copyright| vim:tw=78:ts=8:noet:ft=help:norl: