Omit 'Pattern not found' error message in Vim script

Question

I added a function in my .vimrc that's just few search and replace commands. However if one of the patterns is not found I get an error message that I need to enter through. How can I suppress this?

Answer 1

You might use silent:

:silent %s/x/y/g

or, if you need to do string manipulation to determine the strings to search and replace:

exec ":silent %s/x/" . varName . "/g"

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that silent only works in scripts.

Answer 2

Maybe the :he :silent thing can be used to suppress those errors?

Answer 3

You can either use :silent or :silent! as a prefix to any command or you can add the 'e' option to the substitute, which is often easier.

:%s/x/y/ge
:silent! %s/x/y/g
:silent %s/x/y/g

For more information, see

:help :silent
:help :s_flags

The information on the e flag is a few paragraphs down from the :s_flags help.