CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vim
N4v
N4v

Reputation: 825

Substitute `number` with `(number)` in multiple lines

I am a beginner at Vim and I've been reading about substitution but I haven't found an answer to this question.

Let's say I have some numbers in a file like so:

    1
    2
    3

And I want to get:

    (1)
    (2)
    (3)

I think the command should resemble something like :s:\d\+:........ Also, what's the difference between :s/foo/bar and :s:foo:bar ?

Thanks

Upvotes: 2

Views: 546

Answers (3)

romainl
romainl

Reputation: 196789

Here is an alternative, slightly less verbose, solution:

:%s/^\d\+/(&)

Explanation:

^   anchors the pattern to the beginning of the line
\d  is the atom that covers 0123456789
\+  matches one or more of the preceding item
&   is a shorthand for \0, the whole match

Upvotes: 12

jbr
jbr

Reputation: 6258

You can do what you want with:

:%s/\([0-9]\)/(\1)/

%s means global search and replace, that is do the search/replace for every line in the file. the \( \) defines a group, which in turn is referenced by \1. So the above search and replace, finds all lines with a single digit ([0-9]), and replaces it with the matched digit surrounded by parentheses.

Upvotes: 1

Nick Peterson
Nick Peterson

Reputation: 771

Let me address those in reverse.

First: there's no difference between :s/foo/bar and :s:foo:bar; whatever delimiter you use after the s, vim will expect you to use from then on. This can be nice if you have a substitution involving lots of slashes, for instance.

For the first: to do this to the first number on the current line (assuming no commas, decimal places, etc), you could do

:s:\(\d\+\):(\1)

The \(...\) doesn't change what is matched - rather, it tells vim to remember whatever matched what is inside, and store it. The first \(...\) is stored in \1, the second in \2, etc. So, when you do the replacement, you can reference \1 to get the number back.

If you want to change ALL numbers on the current line, change it to

:s:\(\d\+\):(\1):g

If you want to change ALL numbers on ALL lines, change it to

:%s:\(\d\+\):(\1):g

Upvotes: 8

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