CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vim
greg hor
greg hor

Reputation: 792

VIM remove space between successive curly brackets with a single mapping

I am working on a jinja file in vim which was poorly formatted for some reasons. I have many variables in curly brackets with a space left in between the curly brackets. Ex:

this is my jinja variable { { foo } }

I would like to remove the extra space between the curly brackets. The desired outcome is

This my jinja variable {{ foo }}

This just works fine if I chain two substitute commands in the command mode.

:%s/{ {/{{/g | %s/} }/}}/g

However, if I wrap the substitute commands in a mapping noremap <leader>cb :%s/{ {/{{/g | %s/} }/}}/g <CR>, only the first substitution is executed, but not the second. Here is the corresponding output

This my jinja variable {{ foo } }

What am I doing wrong here?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 50

Answers (2)

mattb
mattb

Reputation: 3063

You can do it using one substitution by taking advantage of capture groups:

nnoremap <leader>cb :%s/{ {\(.*\)} }/{{\1}}/<CR>

Not that this will fail if you have the pattern twice on a line like:

{ { hello } } ... { { world } }

because it'll be turned into:

{{ hello } } ... { { world}}

Someone might come along with an actual explanation on why your way doesn't work, so you should probably not accept this answer.

Upvotes: 1

romainl
romainl

Reputation: 196526

Your mapping doesn't work because of the |:

noremap <leader>cb :%s/{ {/{{/g | %s/} }/}}/g <CR>
                                ^

You can rewrite it in several ways:

noremap <leader>cb :%s/{ {/{{/g \| %s/} }/}}/g <CR>
noremap <leader>cb :%s/{ {/{{/g <bar> %s/} }/}}/g <CR>
etc.

See :help map-bar.

By the way, :noremap covers too many modes, which you might find problematic in the long run. If you want a normal mode mapping, be explicit about it:

nnoremap <leader>cb :%s/{ {/{{/g <bar> %s/} }/}}/g <CR>

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions