CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexvim
kal
kal

Reputation: 29421

Interactive search/replace regex in Vim?

I know the regex for doing a global replace,

%s/old/new/g

How do you go about doing an interactive search-replace in Vim?

Upvotes: 307

Views: 97225

Answers (7)

sumek
sumek

Reputation: 28222

Neovim now has a feature inccommand which allows you to preview the substitution:

inccommand has two options:

  • set inccommand=split previews substitutions in a split pane
  • set inccommand=nosplit previews substitution in the active buffer

enter image description here

Image taken from: https://medium.com/@eric.burel/stop-using-open-source-5cb19baca44d Documentation of the feature: https://neovim.io/doc/user/options.html#'inccommand'

Upvotes: 2

Mark Biek
Mark Biek

Reputation: 150909

Add the flag c (in the vim command prompt):

:%s/old/new/gc

will give you a yes/no prompt at each occurrence of 'old'.

"old" is highlighted in the text; at the bottom of the window it says "replace with new (y/n/a/q/l/^E/^y)?)"

Vim's built-in help offers useful info on the options available once substitution with confirmation has been selected. Use:

:h :s

Then scroll to section on confirm options. Screenshot below:

Text that says "[C] Confirm each substitution. [...] CTRL-Y to scroll the screen down"

For instance, to substitute this and all remaining matches, use a.

Upvotes: 565

hwrod
hwrod

Reputation: 469

If your replacement text needs to change for each matched occurrence (i.e. not simply choosing Yes/No to apply a singular replacement) you can use a Vim plugin I made called interactive-replace.

Upvotes: 3

Amjith
Amjith

Reputation: 23894

If you just want to count the number of occurrences of 'abc' then you can do %s/abc//gn. This doesn't replace anything but just reports the number of occurrences of 'abc'.

Upvotes: 9

Vincent Scheib
Vincent Scheib

Reputation: 18650

Mark Biek pointed out using:

%s/old/new/gc

for a global search replace with confirmation for each substitution. But, I also enjoy interactively verifying that the old text will match correctly. I first do a search with a regex, then I reuse that pattern:

/old.pattern.to.match
%s//replacement/gc

The s// will use the last search pattern.

Upvotes: 90

Logan Capaldo
Logan Capaldo

Reputation: 40346

I think you're looking for c, eg s/abc/123/gc, this will cause VIM to confirm the replacements. See :help :substitute for more information.

Upvotes: 21

paxdiablo
paxdiablo

Reputation: 882606

I usually use the find/substitute/next/repeat command :-)

/old<CR>3snew<ESC>n.n.n.n.n.n.n.

That's find "old", substitute 3 characters for "new", find next, repeat substitute, and so on.

It's a pain for massive substitutions but it lets you selectively ignore some occurrences of old (by just pressing n again to find the next one instead of . to repeat a substitution).

Upvotes: 9

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