CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexvim
Nona
Nona

Reputation: 5462

How to use vim regex to make this substitution?

So I have multiple lines in my code with this pattern:

has_many :kites, dependent: :destroy

I want to use regex in vim to make a substitution such that the above becomes:

it { should have_many(:kites) }

This is the regex I'm using (note the 22s is the line number on which to make the substitution) but I'm getting a 'pattern not found'.

:22s/\s.*has_many (:[a-z]*),.*/it { should have_many(\1) }/g

Why is this not matching?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 61

Answers (2)

Micah Elliott
Micah Elliott

Reputation: 10264

Your parentheses are being taken literally. To make them a captured grouping, you need to escape them.

... Unless you want to use Vim’s “magic” mode(s). See :h /magic.

Upvotes: 3

Nona
Nona

Reputation: 5462

Need to do something like this with backslashes to escape the parentheses:

:22s/\s.*has_many \(:[a-z]*\),.*/it { should have_many(\1) }/g

Upvotes: 2

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