CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vim
rnso
rnso

Reputation: 24555

Vim- combine 2 commands using ranges to one

I have 2 commands that work all right to add line numbers to whole file or selection and to change those line numbers to create 1] format: 

command -range=% Addln2 <line1>,<line2>!cat -n 
command -range=% Addln3 <line1>,<line2>s/\v\s+(\d+)\s+/\1] /g

However, I am not able to combine them to one command. I tried: 

command -range=% Addln2 <line1>,<line2>!cat -n | s/\v\s+(\d+)\s+/\1] /g

but it produces error.

Using sed also does not work: 

command -range=% Addln2 <line1>,<line2>!cat -n | sed 's/\v\s+(\d+)\s+/\1] /g'

I also tried to put them together in a function: 

function Addlnfn() range
    a:firstline,a:lastline !cat -n 
    a:lastline,a:firstline s/\v\s+(\d+)\s+/\1] /g
endfunction

command -range=% Addlnfn <line1>,<line2>call Addlnfn()

But this also produces an error: Missing endfunction

Where is the problem and how can this be solved? Thanks.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 80

Answers (1)

Ingo Karkat
Ingo Karkat

Reputation: 172598

In general, | can be used to separate commands, but there are exceptions, and :! is one of them, as :help :bar explains. The reason here is that the external shell command invoked by :! may be a pipeline (e.g. cmd1 | grep foo), so the | character needs to be part of the arguments, and cannot separate Vim commands.

One workaround is to surround the first command with :execute:

command -range=% Addln2 execute '<line1>,<line2>!cat -n' | s/\v\s+(\d+)\s+/\1] /g

Moving the commands into a function is another good approach. What you've missed is that the evaluation of the a:firstline,a:lastline function arguments doesn't happen automatically in Vimscript. Again :execute comes to the rescue:

function Addlnfn() range
    execute a:firstline . ',' . a:lastline . '!cat -n'
    execute a:lastline . ',' . a:firstline . 's/\v\s+(\d+)\s+/\1] /g'
endfunction
command -range=% Addlnfn <line1>,<line2>call Addlnfn()

Overall critique

You don't need an external command to number the lines; this can be done purely inside Vim. Looking at your other recent question, it seems you've already discovered that.

Upvotes: 2

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