Show pageOld revisionsBacklinksBack to top This page is read only. You can view the source, but not change it. Ask your administrator if you think this is wrong. ===== Search and Replace ===== ==== Typical Syntax ==== * :%s/SEARCH/REPLACEMENT/g * % - tells vim to search the entire file * g - tells vim to replace all instances on each line, instead of just the first ==== Metacharacters ==== |. |any character except new line | |\s |whitespace character | |\S |non-whitespace character | |\d |digit | |\D |non-digit | |\x |hex digit | |\X |non-hex digit | |\o |octal digit | |\O |non-octal digit | |\h |head of word character (a,b,c...z,A,B,C...Z and _) | |\H |non-head of word character | |\p |printable character | |\P |like \p, but excluding digits | |\w |word character | |\W |non-word character | |\a |alphabetic character | |\A |non-alphabetic character | |\l |lowercase character | |\L |non-lowercase character | |\u |uppercase character | |\U |non-uppercase character | ==== clear search highlighting ==== * :let @/='' ==== Newline Replace ==== * using \n as a replacement will NOT break the lines as expected (\n can be used as the search pattern) * instead, type :%s/SEARCH/ * at this point, press CTRL-V, Enter (you should now see :%s/SEARCH/^M * finish your pattern: :%s/SEARCH/^M/g (all SEARCH occurrences will be replaced with newlines, and lines WILL break) * tab can also be accomplished the same way, but \t works anyway * when using gvim (Windows), CTRL-V is probably mapped to paste from the clipboard; instead, use CTRL-Q the same way ===== Special Characters ===== Search results can be replaced with special characters like this: * type :%s/SEARCH/ * press CTRL-V (CTRL-Q on windows); you now have the option to: * type the 3 digit decimal value for the character you want * type x then the 2 character hex value you want * type o then the 3 digit octal value you want * full example to replace all occurances of SEARCH with a vertical tab:<code> :%s/SEARCH/ (press CTRL-V or CTRL-Q) (press the letter o) 013/g </code> * once the replace is done, you can move the cursor over the character and type 'ga' to see the decimal, hex, and octal values docs/vim/search_and_replace.txt Last modified: 2009/01/22 11:27by billh