I know regex for doing a global replace,
%s/old/new/g
how do you go about doing an interactive search replace in vim
+3
A:
I usually use the find/substitute/next/repeat command :-)
/old<CR>3snew<ESC>n.n.n.n.n.n.n.
That's find "old", substitute 3 characters for "new", find next, repeat substitute, and so on.
It's a pain for massive substitutions but it lets you selectively ignore some occurrences of old (by just pressing n again to find the next one instead of . to repeat a substitution).
paxdiablo
2009-02-03 02:38:33
I use this as well, even for similar texts. (3cW<texthere><ESC><move to new location>.<move>.<move>.)
strager
2009-02-03 03:00:46
Well, I won't be using this 'antipattern' again - see Mark Biek's answer for how to do it the right way.
paxdiablo
2009-02-03 04:25:53
It's not an antipattern! It's sweet. And you can search in the opposite direction using N. Really good if you see a word and want to change it. *cwNewText<ESC>N.n.n. (This will jump away from the word under the cursor, but then jump back soon as you have changed the next occurrence.
PEZ
2009-02-03 07:57:48
+1, I learned something new today! vim has so many hidden secrets.. :)
Marc Novakowski
2009-02-03 02:45:23
Learning vim commands is a little bit like playing Nethack. You never know what wonders a single character is going to hold.
Mark Biek
2009-02-03 03:06:03
Well, bugger me ! I've been using vi for nigh on 30 years and this is the first time I've seen this. That little editor continues to amaze me even after all this time (especially the vim extensions). +1 for making my life easier, where were you 20-odd years ago?
paxdiablo
2009-02-03 03:10:27
@Pax Alternating between building a tree fort and writing BASIC programs to print out dirty words :)
Mark Biek
2009-02-03 03:19:51
I'm honestly not trying to come across as snarky, but all of this could have been found by doing ":help :s" which would have led you straight to ":help :s_flags".
Jeremy Cantrell
2009-02-05 16:09:48
+4
A:
I think you're looking for c, eg s/abc/123/gc, this will cause VIM to confirm the replacements. See :help :substitute for more information.
Logan Capaldo
2009-02-03 02:46:42
+1
A:
If you just want to count the number of occurrences of 'abc' then you can do %s/abc//gn. This won't replace anything but just report the count for the number of occurences of abc.
jinxed_coder
2009-02-03 21:18:43