Search and delete to end of line in vim

Question

I am trying to clean up some code and I am trying to find a good way of achieving the following:

I am a #decent
guy

and I want:

I am a guy

I tried using

:g/#/d

but the whole line gets deleted and I only want to delete until the end of line. What is the best way to achieve this in vim?

Thank you.

Answer 1

press d + shift 4 or d + $, which means delete to end of the line

• d means delete
• shift 4 or $ means cursor to end of the line

Answer 2

Try this instead:

:s/ # .*\n/ /

Explanation:

You were using the wrong command, as they may look similar to new users.

• :[range]g/VRE/act Globally apply the "act"ion (one letter command) to all lines (in range, default all file) matching the VRE (pattern)
• :[range]s/VRE/repl/f Substitute within lines (in range, default current line) the matching VRE (pattern) with the "repl"acement using optional "f"lags

Now about the pattern, I think this candidate cover most cases (all but comments at the beginning of a line and comments without space after pound sign)

• # litteral space, then hash tag, then space again
• .* dot for any character, star to mean the previous may occur many times or even be absent
• $ dollar at end to stay at "end of line", but \n to catch en EOL here

Answer 3

With :global you would want something like

:global/#/normal! f#D | join

or

:global/#/substitute/#.*// | join

Answer 4

That won't because the usage of that command:

:[range]g/pattern/cmd

defaults to range being the whole line, and you are not doing any substitution anyway.

---

Use:

:%s/#.\+\n//g

instead.

• # Matches a literal #.
• .\+\n Matches everything until the end of line, and a new line.
• // Replaces the entire match with nothing.