221 lines
8.1 KiB
Text
221 lines
8.1 KiB
Text
*usr_26.txt* For Vim version 7.4. Last change: 2006 Apr 24
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VIM USER MANUAL - by Bram Moolenaar
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Repeating
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An editing task is hardly ever unstructured. A change often needs to be made
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several times. In this chapter a number of useful ways to repeat a change
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will be explained.
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|26.1| Repeating with Visual mode
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|26.2| Add and subtract
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|26.3| Making a change in many files
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|26.4| Using Vim from a shell script
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Next chapter: |usr_27.txt| Search commands and patterns
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Previous chapter: |usr_25.txt| Editing formatted text
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Table of contents: |usr_toc.txt|
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==============================================================================
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*26.1* Repeating with Visual mode
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Visual mode is very handy for making a change in any sequence of lines. You
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can see the highlighted text, thus you can check if the correct lines are
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changed. But making the selection takes some typing. The "gv" command
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selects the same area again. This allows you to do another operation on the
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same text.
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Suppose you have some lines where you want to change "2001" to "2002" and
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"2000" to "2001":
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The financial results for 2001 are better ~
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than for 2000. The income increased by 50%, ~
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even though 2001 had more rain than 2000. ~
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2000 2001 ~
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income 45,403 66,234 ~
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First change "2001" to "2002". Select the lines in Visual mode, and use: >
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:s/2001/2002/g
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Now use "gv" to reselect the same text. It doesn't matter where the cursor
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is. Then use ":s/2000/2001/g" to make the second change.
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Obviously, you can repeat these changes several times.
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==============================================================================
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*26.2* Add and subtract
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When repeating the change of one number into another, you often have a fixed
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offset. In the example above, one was added to each year. Instead of typing
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a substitute command for each year that appears, the CTRL-A command can be
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used.
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Using the same text as above, search for a year: >
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/19[0-9][0-9]\|20[0-9][0-9]
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Now press CTRL-A. The year will be increased by one:
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The financial results for 2002 are better ~
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than for 2000. The income increased by 50%, ~
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even though 2001 had more rain than 2000. ~
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2000 2001 ~
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income 45,403 66,234 ~
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Use "n" to find the next year, and press "." to repeat the CTRL-A ("." is a
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bit quicker to type). Repeat "n" and "." for all years that appear.
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Hint: set the 'hlsearch' option to see the matches you are going to change,
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then you can look ahead and do it faster.
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Adding more than one can be done by prepending the number to CTRL-A. Suppose
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you have this list:
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1. item four ~
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2. item five ~
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3. item six ~
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Move the cursor to "1." and type: >
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3 CTRL-A
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The "1." will change to "4.". Again, you can use "." to repeat this on the
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other numbers.
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Another example:
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006 foo bar ~
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007 foo bar ~
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Using CTRL-A on these numbers results in:
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007 foo bar ~
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010 foo bar ~
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7 plus one is 10? What happened here is that Vim recognized "007" as an octal
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number, because there is a leading zero. This notation is often used in C
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programs. If you do not want a number with leading zeros to be handled as
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octal, use this: >
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:set nrformats-=octal
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The CTRL-X command does subtraction in a similar way.
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==============================================================================
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*26.3* Making a change in many files
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Suppose you have a variable called "x_cnt" and you want to change it to
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"x_counter". This variable is used in several of your C files. You need to
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change it in all files. This is how you do it.
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Put all the relevant files in the argument list: >
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:args *.c
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<
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This finds all C files and edits the first one. Now you can perform a
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substitution command on all these files: >
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:argdo %s/\<x_cnt\>/x_counter/ge | update
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The ":argdo" command takes an argument that is another command. That command
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will be executed on all files in the argument list.
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The "%s" substitute command that follows works on all lines. It finds the
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word "x_cnt" with "\<x_cnt\>". The "\<" and "\>" are used to match the whole
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word only, and not "px_cnt" or "x_cnt2".
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The flags for the substitute command include "g" to replace all occurrences
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of "x_cnt" in the same line. The "e" flag is used to avoid an error message
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when "x_cnt" does not appear in the file. Otherwise ":argdo" would abort on
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the first file where "x_cnt" was not found.
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The "|" separates two commands. The following "update" command writes the
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file only if it was changed. If no "x_cnt" was changed to "x_counter" nothing
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happens.
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There is also the ":windo" command, which executes its argument in all
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windows. And ":bufdo" executes its argument on all buffers. Be careful with
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this, because you might have more files in the buffer list than you think.
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Check this with the ":buffers" command (or ":ls").
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==============================================================================
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*26.4* Using Vim from a shell script
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Suppose you have a lot of files in which you need to change the string
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"-person-" to "Jones" and then print it. How do you do that? One way is to
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do a lot of typing. The other is to write a shell script to do the work.
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The Vim editor does a superb job as a screen-oriented editor when using
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Normal mode commands. For batch processing, however, Normal mode commands do
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not result in clear, commented command files; so here you will use Ex mode
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instead. This mode gives you a nice command-line interface that makes it easy
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to put into a batch file. ("Ex command" is just another name for a
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command-line (:) command.)
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The Ex mode commands you need are as follows: >
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%s/-person-/Jones/g
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write tempfile
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quit
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You put these commands in the file "change.vim". Now to run the editor in
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batch mode, use this shell script: >
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for file in *.txt; do
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vim -e -s $file < change.vim
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lpr -r tempfile
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done
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The for-done loop is a shell construct to repeat the two lines in between,
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while the $file variable is set to a different file name each time.
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The second line runs the Vim editor in Ex mode (-e argument) on the file
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$file and reads commands from the file "change.vim". The -s argument tells
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Vim to operate in silent mode. In other words, do not keep outputting the
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:prompt, or any other prompt for that matter.
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The "lpr -r tempfile" command prints the resulting "tempfile" and deletes
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it (that's what the -r argument does).
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READING FROM STDIN
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Vim can read text on standard input. Since the normal way is to read commands
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there, you must tell Vim to read text instead. This is done by passing the
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"-" argument in place of a file. Example: >
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ls | vim -
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This allows you to edit the output of the "ls" command, without first saving
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the text in a file.
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If you use the standard input to read text from, you can use the "-S"
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argument to read a script: >
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producer | vim -S change.vim -
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NORMAL MODE SCRIPTS
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If you really want to use Normal mode commands in a script, you can use it
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like this: >
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vim -s script file.txt ...
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<
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Note:
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"-s" has a different meaning when it is used without "-e". Here it
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means to source the "script" as Normal mode commands. When used with
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"-e" it means to be silent, and doesn't use the next argument as a
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file name.
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The commands in "script" are executed like you typed them. Don't forget that
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a line break is interpreted as pressing <Enter>. In Normal mode that moves
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the cursor to the next line.
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To create the script you can edit the script file and type the commands.
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You need to imagine what the result would be, which can be a bit difficult.
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Another way is to record the commands while you perform them manually. This
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is how you do that: >
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vim -w script file.txt ...
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All typed keys will be written to "script". If you make a small mistake you
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can just continue and remember to edit the script later.
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The "-w" argument appends to an existing script. That is good when you
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want to record the script bit by bit. If you want to start from scratch and
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start all over, use the "-W" argument. It overwrites any existing file.
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==============================================================================
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Next chapter: |usr_27.txt| Search commands and patterns
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Copyright: see |manual-copyright| vim:tw=78:ts=8:ft=help:norl:
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