1*usr_26.txt* For Vim version 7.3. Last change: 2006 Apr 24 2 3 VIM USER MANUAL - by Bram Moolenaar 4 5 Repeating 6 7 8An editing task is hardly ever unstructured. A change often needs to be made 9several times. In this chapter a number of useful ways to repeat a change 10will be explained. 11 12|26.1| Repeating with Visual mode 13|26.2| Add and subtract 14|26.3| Making a change in many files 15|26.4| Using Vim from a shell script 16 17 Next chapter: |usr_27.txt| Search commands and patterns 18 Previous chapter: |usr_25.txt| Editing formatted text 19Table of contents: |usr_toc.txt| 20 21============================================================================== 22*26.1* Repeating with Visual mode 23 24Visual mode is very handy for making a change in any sequence of lines. You 25can see the highlighted text, thus you can check if the correct lines are 26changed. But making the selection takes some typing. The "gv" command 27selects the same area again. This allows you to do another operation on the 28same text. 29 Suppose you have some lines where you want to change "2001" to "2002" and 30"2000" to "2001": 31 32 The financial results for 2001 are better ~ 33 than for 2000. The income increased by 50%, ~ 34 even though 2001 had more rain than 2000. ~ 35 2000 2001 ~ 36 income 45,403 66,234 ~ 37 38First change "2001" to "2002". Select the lines in Visual mode, and use: > 39 40 :s/2001/2002/g 41 42Now use "gv" to reselect the same text. It doesn't matter where the cursor 43is. Then use ":s/2000/2001/g" to make the second change. 44 Obviously, you can repeat these changes several times. 45 46============================================================================== 47*26.2* Add and subtract 48 49When repeating the change of one number into another, you often have a fixed 50offset. In the example above, one was added to each year. Instead of typing 51a substitute command for each year that appears, the CTRL-A command can be 52used. 53 Using the same text as above, search for a year: > 54 55 /19[0-9][0-9]\|20[0-9][0-9] 56 57Now press CTRL-A. The year will be increased by one: 58 59 The financial results for 2002 are better ~ 60 than for 2000. The income increased by 50%, ~ 61 even though 2001 had more rain than 2000. ~ 62 2000 2001 ~ 63 income 45,403 66,234 ~ 64 65Use "n" to find the next year, and press "." to repeat the CTRL-A ("." is a 66bit quicker to type). Repeat "n" and "." for all years that appear. 67 Hint: set the 'hlsearch' option to see the matches you are going to change, 68then you can look ahead and do it faster. 69 70Adding more than one can be done by prepending the number to CTRL-A. Suppose 71you have this list: 72 73 1. item four ~ 74 2. item five ~ 75 3. item six ~ 76 77Move the cursor to "1." and type: > 78 79 3 CTRL-A 80 81The "1." will change to "4.". Again, you can use "." to repeat this on the 82other numbers. 83 84Another example: 85 86 006 foo bar ~ 87 007 foo bar ~ 88 89Using CTRL-A on these numbers results in: 90 91 007 foo bar ~ 92 010 foo bar ~ 93 947 plus one is 10? What happened here is that Vim recognized "007" as an octal 95number, because there is a leading zero. This notation is often used in C 96programs. If you do not want a number with leading zeros to be handled as 97octal, use this: > 98 99 :set nrformats-=octal 100 101The CTRL-X command does subtraction in a similar way. 102 103============================================================================== 104*26.3* Making a change in many files 105 106Suppose you have a variable called "x_cnt" and you want to change it to 107"x_counter". This variable is used in several of your C files. You need to 108change it in all files. This is how you do it. 109 Put all the relevant files in the argument list: > 110 111 :args *.c 112< 113This finds all C files and edits the first one. Now you can perform a 114substitution command on all these files: > 115 116 :argdo %s/\<x_cnt\>/x_counter/ge | update 117 118The ":argdo" command takes an argument that is another command. That command 119will be executed on all files in the argument list. 120 The "%s" substitute command that follows works on all lines. It finds the 121word "x_cnt" with "\<x_cnt\>". The "\<" and "\>" are used to match the whole 122word only, and not "px_cnt" or "x_cnt2". 123 The flags for the substitute command include "g" to replace all occurrences 124of "x_cnt" in the same line. The "e" flag is used to avoid an error message 125when "x_cnt" does not appear in the file. Otherwise ":argdo" would abort on 126the first file where "x_cnt" was not found. 127 The "|" separates two commands. The following "update" command writes the 128file only if it was changed. If no "x_cnt" was changed to "x_counter" nothing 129happens. 130 131There is also the ":windo" command, which executes its argument in all 132windows. And ":bufdo" executes its argument on all buffers. Be careful with 133this, because you might have more files in the buffer list than you think. 134Check this with the ":buffers" command (or ":ls"). 135 136============================================================================== 137*26.4* Using Vim from a shell script 138 139Suppose you have a lot of files in which you need to change the string 140"-person-" to "Jones" and then print it. How do you do that? One way is to 141do a lot of typing. The other is to write a shell script to do the work. 142 The Vim editor does a superb job as a screen-oriented editor when using 143Normal mode commands. For batch processing, however, Normal mode commands do 144not result in clear, commented command files; so here you will use Ex mode 145instead. This mode gives you a nice command-line interface that makes it easy 146to put into a batch file. ("Ex command" is just another name for a 147command-line (:) command.) 148 The Ex mode commands you need are as follows: > 149 150 %s/-person-/Jones/g 151 write tempfile 152 quit 153 154You put these commands in the file "change.vim". Now to run the editor in 155batch mode, use this shell script: > 156 157 for file in *.txt; do 158 vim -e -s $file < change.vim 159 lpr -r tempfile 160 done 161 162The for-done loop is a shell construct to repeat the two lines in between, 163while the $file variable is set to a different file name each time. 164 The second line runs the Vim editor in Ex mode (-e argument) on the file 165$file and reads commands from the file "change.vim". The -s argument tells 166Vim to operate in silent mode. In other words, do not keep outputting the 167:prompt, or any other prompt for that matter. 168 The "lpr -r tempfile" command prints the resulting "tempfile" and deletes 169it (that's what the -r argument does). 170 171 172READING FROM STDIN 173 174Vim can read text on standard input. Since the normal way is to read commands 175there, you must tell Vim to read text instead. This is done by passing the 176"-" argument in place of a file. Example: > 177 178 ls | vim - 179 180This allows you to edit the output of the "ls" command, without first saving 181the text in a file. 182 If you use the standard input to read text from, you can use the "-S" 183argument to read a script: > 184 185 producer | vim -S change.vim - 186 187 188NORMAL MODE SCRIPTS 189 190If you really want to use Normal mode commands in a script, you can use it 191like this: > 192 193 vim -s script file.txt ... 194< 195 Note: 196 "-s" has a different meaning when it is used without "-e". Here it 197 means to source the "script" as Normal mode commands. When used with 198 "-e" it means to be silent, and doesn't use the next argument as a 199 file name. 200 201The commands in "script" are executed like you typed them. Don't forget that 202a line break is interpreted as pressing <Enter>. In Normal mode that moves 203the cursor to the next line. 204 To create the script you can edit the script file and type the commands. 205You need to imagine what the result would be, which can be a bit difficult. 206Another way is to record the commands while you perform them manually. This 207is how you do that: > 208 209 vim -w script file.txt ... 210 211All typed keys will be written to "script". If you make a small mistake you 212can just continue and remember to edit the script later. 213 The "-w" argument appends to an existing script. That is good when you 214want to record the script bit by bit. If you want to start from scratch and 215start all over, use the "-W" argument. It overwrites any existing file. 216 217============================================================================== 218 219Next chapter: |usr_27.txt| Search commands and patterns 220 221Copyright: see |manual-copyright| vim:tw=78:ts=8:ft=help:norl: 222