CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexvimvi
user1427661
user1427661

Reputation: 11774

Regex For HTML Search and Replace

I'm doing a simple search and replace command in vim and I'm trying to escape the <> and / characters so I can use them in my search expression. I realize there are more elegant ways of finding HTML tags, but what I'm really looking for is a localized search and replace command that will replace <h1>UNKNOWN MISSION</h2> with <h2>UNKNOWN MISSION</h2>. Here's my command where I try to escape the special characters: 

:%s/\<h1\>UNKNOWN MISSION\<\/h2\>/\<h2\>UNKNOWN MISSION\<\/h2\>/

The pattern is not matching. Any ideas?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1969

Answers (3)

romainl
romainl

Reputation: 196546

I'd do the following…

  1. Place the cursor on the first instance of UNKNOWN MISSION with:

    /<h1<CR>

  2. Yank until 2 with:

    yt2

  3. Do the substitution with:

    :%s+<C-r>"2>+<C-r>"1>

    where <C-r>" is used to insert the content of the default register in the command line and + is used as an alternative separator in order to avoid escaping slashes. After insertion, the whole command looks like:

    %s+<h1>UNKNOWN MISSION</h2>+<h1>UNKNOWN MISSION</h1>

Add a /g flag if you need it.

Upvotes: 1

mjgpy3
mjgpy3

Reputation: 8937

:%s/<h1>UNKNOWN MISSION<\/h2>/<h2>UNKNOWN MISSION<\/h2>/g

Seems to be working for me. You only have to escape the backslash.

Upvotes: 3

Andrew Clark
Andrew Clark

Reputation: 208475

You don't need to escape the <> characters, try the following:

:%s/<h1>UNKNOWN MISSION<\/h2>/<h2>UNKNOWN MISSION<\/h2>/

Upvotes: 1

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