CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vim
ygoncho
ygoncho

Reputation: 367

Vim - count nonblank nonwhitespace lines

Using GVIM, I'd like to have something similar to the line count MSExcel offers - an on-the-fly line count that shows me how many lines I've selected so far that are non-blank (i.e. don't contain only whitespaces).

Up until now I've always used y for yank and then it shows on the bottom how many lines yanked, but:

  1. this is not on-the-fly
  2. this counts also blank/whitespace lines.

What's the best way to achieve this?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1203

Answers (3)

Ingo Karkat
Ingo Karkat

Reputation: 172648

The downside of :substitute//n is that is clobbers the last search pattern and search history, and its output contains additional text and is difficult to capture. Alternatively, you can filter() the entire buffer, and count the matches:

:echo len(filter(getline(1, '$'), 'v:val =~# "\\S"'))

This can be easily turned into a custom mapping or command. If the performance is acceptable, you can even add this to your 'statusline':

:let &statusline .= ' %{len(filter(getline(1, "$"), ''v:val =~# "\\S"''))} lines'

Note: The statusline update won't work during a visual selection, because the marks '< and '> are only set after you've left the selection.

Upvotes: 4

Ingo Karkat
Ingo Karkat

Reputation: 172648

:%s/\S//n
3 matches on 3 lines

This combines a no-op :substitute (with the /n flag) that only counts the matching lines with the \S atom, which matches non-whitespace. As long as there is any such in a line, it is counted.

For the visual selection, just trigger it from there; it'll automatically use :'<,'> range instead of :%.

Upvotes: 1

Jakob
Jakob

Reputation: 20821

To get the number of blank lines you could use

:%s/^.\+//n

of course, instead of % you can use any other range command.
However, this approach will count only non-blank lines (without whitespace) not starting with a whitespace. Some hints on counting search results can be found here.

To allow for whitespace recognition you could use something like

:%s/^.*[^ ]\+//n

Upvotes: 0

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