CODEWITHSUNDEEP
unixvi
Whimusical
Whimusical

Reputation: 6619

Search and Replace in Vi

I used to use some interactive search and replace in Vi but I totally forgot about it. Let's explain what I remember because I am currently confused when tried to find out the official ways to replace:

It was close to search by :/pattern but something more like :/pattern/replacement and then I could approve one by one every found string and jump to next occurence by pressing 'n' or selectively replace with the replacement pressing 'r'.

Did I dream that? All I see are regex to do replacements at once and alternatively asking you for a confirmation!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 701

Answers (2)

Igor Pejic
Igor Pejic

Reputation: 3698

A solution without regex:

Search the word you want to replace with: /foo or ?foo for backward search.

Type cw to change the word to a new one.

Press n to get to the next occurrence of this word and now either: . to replace the word or n for next occurrence.

Upvotes: 1

Veger
Veger

Reputation: 37906

Add c to the flags.

For example

:%s/pattern/replacement/c

Searches globally for pattern and asks you whether to replace it with replacement

See the vim documentation for more information about these flags.

Upvotes: 2

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