//View Tip #840
» Sudo from vim to write file
» Making shell scripts executable via editor hooks
Aaron Brady
John
Eric
SteveG
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» Quickly empty a file in vi» Sudo from vim to write file
» Making shell scripts executable via editor hooks
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We can use vim to make changes to a file all in one command, for example
This will open the file 'filename' and replace all occurances of 'a' with 'b' on lines 5-10. The file will then be written and closed. To edit the file after the change, just remove the ' | wq' from the end of the command.
vim -c "5,10s/a/b/g | wq" filename
This will open the file 'filename' and replace all occurances of 'a' with 'b' on lines 5-10. The file will then be written and closed. To edit the file after the change, just remove the ' | wq' from the end of the command.
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Aaron Brady#1
Couldn't you do this with ex instead of full blown Vim?
Posted 2009-06-18 13:46:55
JohnSed is more designed for this:
sed -i "5,10s/a/b/g" filename
Does exactly what you are suggesting without invoking all of vim.
sed -i "5,10s/a/b/g" filename
Does exactly what you are suggesting without invoking all of vim.
Posted 2009-06-18 13:59:18
EricI've used:
perl -p -i -e "s/old/new" <FILENAME>
It has served me very well... and you can use perl regex if you are so inclined.
perl -p -i -e "s/old/new" <FILENAME>
It has served me very well... and you can use perl regex if you are so inclined.
Posted 2009-06-18 14:08:54
SteveGYes, you could do this all the ways mentioned in the above comments, but this is just an alternative.
TMTOWTDI!
Also, although there are better tools for this particular task, this could be used with other vim commands.
I guess the purpose of the tip is more to bring attention to the fact you can run a vim command directly than to do a substitution which I'm sure we all have over 9000 ways of doing already!
TMTOWTDI!
Also, although there are better tools for this particular task, this could be used with other vim commands.
I guess the purpose of the tip is more to bring attention to the fact you can run a vim command directly than to do a substitution which I'm sure we all have over 9000 ways of doing already!
Posted 2009-06-18 14:29:05