From Vim Tips Wiki

Tip 671 Previous Tip • Next Tip

Created: March 5, 2004 Complexity: basic Author: parv Minimum version: 6.0 Karma: 4/1 Imported from: Tip#671

---

After having gone numb when trying to de-parse HTML source code with very long lines, I created the following function with a macro and command. It takes a list of one or more patterns/strings, and adds a newline after each. (Wrapping/indentation is controlled by your own settings).

"Intentionally left incomplete to be complete as needed
nnoremap ,nl :NewLine

"Add line breaks in after given strings/regex
com! -nargs=+ -range -bar NewLine <line1>,<line2>call AddNewLine(<f-args>)

function! AddNewLine(...) range
  let str_no = 1
  while str_no <= a:0
    exec 'let var = a:' . str_no
    " ` (backquote) is used as delimiters for s///, which is hard
    "  to distinguish but also is much rarer than delimiters.
    "  And, "No Match found" messages are suppressed (s///e)
    exec a:firstline . "," . a:lastline . 's`\(' . var . '\)\($\)\@!`\1\r`ge'
    let str_no = str_no +1
  endwhile
  unlet! var
  unlet str_no
endfunction

Note: The substitution is done on a pattern which is NOT ALREADY AT THE END of the line. The default range is limited to current line; specify other range just like any other Vim command.

[edit] Comments

Why not just use the 's'ubstitution command and ^V^M (ctrl-v, ctrl-m) (or ^Q^M)?

To put a new line after each <br /> tag in your html try something like:

:%s/<br \/>/<br \/>^V^M/g

---

I wrote the function mainly because to get the effect of giving OR'd pattern, in LHS of s///, simply separated by spaces w/o having to escape the darned "|"; also, to not having to remember to put "\($\)\@!" -- zero width negative look ahead assertion for end-of-line -- on each invocation of s///. \@! is used to limit the number of useless blank lines.

As to using ^V^M, instead of \r I suppose, ... I tried using \<CR> , <CR> , ^V^M and ^M in a normal macro, which was not including a new line. (I had not tried ^Q^M.) Instead, search for 'g' was being initiated, given macro's RHS was ":%s/\(>\)\($\)\@!/\1^M/g" (where ^M is one of \<CR> , <CR> , ^V^M, ^M).

The same exact macro works as desired when manually executed. After wasting time w/ above four character sequences, I used \r.

---