Vim copy and paste

Question

My previous question seems to be a bit ambiguous, I will rephrase it:

I have a file like this:

copythis abc
replacethis1 xyz
qwerty replacethis2
hasfshd replacethis3 fslfs
And so on...

NOTE: replacethis1, replacethis2, replacethis3, ... could be any words

How do I replace "replacethis1","replacethis2","replacethis3",.. word by "copythis" word by using minimum vim commands. One way I can do is by:

step 1) delete "replacethis1","replacethis2","replacethis3",.. by using 'dw' step 2) copy "copythis" using 'yw' step 3) move cursor to where "replacethis1" was and do 'p'; move cursor to where "replacethis2" was and do 'p' and so on...

Is there a better way to do this in VIM (using less number of vim commands)?

Answer 1

Have you tried string replacement?

%s/replacethis/copythis

A host of other parameters are possible to fine-tune the replacement. Dive into the Vim help for more details. Some more examples here.

Answer 2

:%s/copythis/replacethis/g

To replace all occurrences of copythis with replacethis. Or you can specify a range of line numbers like:

:8,10 s/copythis/replacethis/g

Note, the /g on the end will tell it to replace all occurrences. If you leave that off it will just do the first one.

Answer 3

if u need to do essentially the same action multiple times - swap 1st word of one line with second word of the next line, I say you could record a macro and call it whenever you need to

Answer 4

Since you changed your question, I'd do it this way:

Move to the first "replacethis1" and type cw (change word), then type "copythis" manually.

Move to the next "replacethis", hit . (repeat last operation)

Move to the next "replacethis", hit .,

and so on, and so on.

If "copythis" is a small word, I think this is the best solution.

Answer 5

1. create this mapping:

   :map z cwcopythis^[

   ( ^[ is the escape character, you can type it in vim using Ctrl+V Ctrl+[ )

2. go to each word you want to replace and press z

Answer 6

The digit needs to be included, and there could be more than one instance per line:

:%s/replacethis\d/copythis/g

Answer 7

Given that "replacethis[1-3]" can be arbitrary unrelated words, the quickest/simplest way to do this globally would be:

:%s/replacethis1\|replacethis2\|replacethis3/copythis/g

(Note that you need to use \| to get the pipes to function as "or". Otherwise, vim will look for the literal | character.)

Answer 8

I've been struggling with this for a long time too, I think I just worked out the cleanest way:

Use whichever command is cleanest to put copythis into register r:

/copythis
"rye

Then go to the replacement and replace it with the contents of r:

/replacethis
cw<CTRL-R>r<ESC>

Then you can just n.n.n.n.n.n.n. for the rest of them, or if they're wildly different just go to the beginning of each and hit .

The key is replacing and pasting in one step so you can use . later.