| *usr_26.txt* For Vim version 7.2. Last change: 2006 Apr 24 |
| |
| VIM USER MANUAL - by Bram Moolenaar |
| |
| Repeating |
| |
| |
| An editing task is hardly ever unstructured. A change often needs to be made |
| several times. In this chapter a number of useful ways to repeat a change |
| will be explained. |
| |
| |26.1| Repeating with Visual mode |
| |26.2| Add and subtract |
| |26.3| Making a change in many files |
| |26.4| Using Vim from a shell script |
| |
| Next chapter: |usr_27.txt| Search commands and patterns |
| Previous chapter: |usr_25.txt| Editing formatted text |
| Table of contents: |usr_toc.txt| |
| |
| ============================================================================== |
| *26.1* Repeating with Visual mode |
| |
| Visual mode is very handy for making a change in any sequence of lines. You |
| can see the highlighted text, thus you can check if the correct lines are |
| changed. But making the selection takes some typing. The "gv" command |
| selects the same area again. This allows you to do another operation on the |
| same text. |
| Suppose you have some lines where you want to change "2001" to "2002" and |
| "2000" to "2001": |
| |
| The financial results for 2001 are better ~ |
| than for 2000. The income increased by 50%, ~ |
| even though 2001 had more rain than 2000. ~ |
| 2000 2001 ~ |
| income 45,403 66,234 ~ |
| |
| First change "2001" to "2002". Select the lines in Visual mode, and use: > |
| |
| :s/2001/2002/g |
| |
| Now use "gv" to reselect the same text. It doesn't matter where the cursor |
| is. Then use ":s/2000/2001/g" to make the second change. |
| Obviously, you can repeat these changes several times. |
| |
| ============================================================================== |
| *26.2* Add and subtract |
| |
| When repeating the change of one number into another, you often have a fixed |
| offset. In the example above, one was added to each year. Instead of typing |
| a substitute command for each year that appears, the CTRL-A command can be |
| used. |
| Using the same text as above, search for a year: > |
| |
| /19[0-9][0-9]\|20[0-9][0-9] |
| |
| Now press CTRL-A. The year will be increased by one: |
| |
| The financial results for 2002 are better ~ |
| than for 2000. The income increased by 50%, ~ |
| even though 2001 had more rain than 2000. ~ |
| 2000 2001 ~ |
| income 45,403 66,234 ~ |
| |
| Use "n" to find the next year, and press "." to repeat the CTRL-A ("." is a |
| bit quicker to type). Repeat "n" and "." for all years that appear. |
| Hint: set the 'hlsearch' option to see the matches you are going to change, |
| then you can look ahead and do it faster. |
| |
| Adding more than one can be done by prepending the number to CTRL-A. Suppose |
| you have this list: |
| |
| 1. item four ~ |
| 2. item five ~ |
| 3. item six ~ |
| |
| Move the cursor to "1." and type: > |
| |
| 3 CTRL-A |
| |
| The "1." will change to "4.". Again, you can use "." to repeat this on the |
| other numbers. |
| |
| Another example: |
| |
| 006 foo bar ~ |
| 007 foo bar ~ |
| |
| Using CTRL-A on these numbers results in: |
| |
| 007 foo bar ~ |
| 010 foo bar ~ |
| |
| 7 plus one is 10? What happened here is that Vim recognized "007" as an octal |
| number, because there is a leading zero. This notation is often used in C |
| programs. If you do not want a number with leading zeros to be handled as |
| octal, use this: > |
| |
| :set nrformats-=octal |
| |
| The CTRL-X command does subtraction in a similar way. |
| |
| ============================================================================== |
| *26.3* Making a change in many files |
| |
| Suppose you have a variable called "x_cnt" and you want to change it to |
| "x_counter". This variable is used in several of your C files. You need to |
| change it in all files. This is how you do it. |
| Put all the relevant files in the argument list: > |
| |
| :args *.c |
| < |
| This finds all C files and edits the first one. Now you can perform a |
| substitution command on all these files: > |
| |
| :argdo %s/\<x_cnt\>/x_counter/ge | update |
| |
| The ":argdo" command takes an argument that is another command. That command |
| will be executed on all files in the argument list. |
| The "%s" substitute command that follows works on all lines. It finds the |
| word "x_cnt" with "\<x_cnt\>". The "\<" and "\>" are used to match the whole |
| word only, and not "px_cnt" or "x_cnt2". |
| The flags for the substitute command include "g" to replace all occurrences |
| of "x_cnt" in the same line. The "e" flag is used to avoid an error message |
| when "x_cnt" does not appear in the file. Otherwise ":argdo" would abort on |
| the first file where "x_cnt" was not found. |
| The "|" separates two commands. The following "update" command writes the |
| file only if it was changed. If no "x_cnt" was changed to "x_counter" nothing |
| happens. |
| |
| There is also the ":windo" command, which executes its argument in all |
| windows. And ":bufdo" executes its argument on all buffers. Be careful with |
| this, because you might have more files in the buffer list than you think. |
| Check this with the ":buffers" command (or ":ls"). |
| |
| ============================================================================== |
| *26.4* Using Vim from a shell script |
| |
| Suppose you have a lot of files in which you need to change the string |
| "-person-" to "Jones" and then print it. How do you do that? One way is to |
| do a lot of typing. The other is to write a shell script to do the work. |
| The Vim editor does a superb job as a screen-oriented editor when using |
| Normal mode commands. For batch processing, however, Normal mode commands do |
| not result in clear, commented command files; so here you will use Ex mode |
| instead. This mode gives you a nice command-line interface that makes it easy |
| to put into a batch file. ("Ex command" is just another name for a |
| command-line (:) command.) |
| The Ex mode commands you need are as follows: > |
| |
| %s/-person-/Jones/g |
| write tempfile |
| quit |
| |
| You put these commands in the file "change.vim". Now to run the editor in |
| batch mode, use this shell script: > |
| |
| for file in *.txt; do |
| vim -e -s $file < change.vim |
| lpr -r tempfile |
| done |
| |
| The for-done loop is a shell construct to repeat the two lines in between, |
| while the $file variable is set to a different file name each time. |
| The second line runs the Vim editor in Ex mode (-e argument) on the file |
| $file and reads commands from the file "change.vim". The -s argument tells |
| Vim to operate in silent mode. In other words, do not keep outputting the |
| :prompt, or any other prompt for that matter. |
| The "lpr -r tempfile" command prints the resulting "tempfile" and deletes |
| it (that's what the -r argument does). |
| |
| |
| READING FROM STDIN |
| |
| Vim can read text on standard input. Since the normal way is to read commands |
| there, you must tell Vim to read text instead. This is done by passing the |
| "-" argument in place of a file. Example: > |
| |
| ls | vim - |
| |
| This allows you to edit the output of the "ls" command, without first saving |
| the text in a file. |
| If you use the standard input to read text from, you can use the "-S" |
| argument to read a script: > |
| |
| producer | vim -S change.vim - |
| |
| |
| NORMAL MODE SCRIPTS |
| |
| If you really want to use Normal mode commands in a script, you can use it |
| like this: > |
| |
| vim -s script file.txt ... |
| < |
| Note: |
| "-s" has a different meaning when it is used without "-e". Here it |
| means to source the "script" as Normal mode commands. When used with |
| "-e" it means to be silent, and doesn't use the next argument as a |
| file name. |
| |
| The commands in "script" are executed like you typed them. Don't forget that |
| a line break is interpreted as pressing <Enter>. In Normal mode that moves |
| the cursor to the next line. |
| To create the script you can edit the script file and type the commands. |
| You need to imagine what the result would be, which can be a bit difficult. |
| Another way is to record the commands while you perform them manually. This |
| is how you do that: > |
| |
| vim -w script file.txt ... |
| |
| All typed keys will be written to "script". If you make a small mistake you |
| can just continue and remember to edit the script later. |
| The "-w" argument appends to an existing script. That is good when you |
| want to record the script bit by bit. If you want to start from scratch and |
| start all over, use the "-W" argument. It overwrites any existing file. |
| |
| ============================================================================== |
| |
| Next chapter: |usr_27.txt| Search commands and patterns |
| |
| Copyright: see |manual-copyright| vim:tw=78:ts=8:ft=help:norl: |