created 2005 · complexity basic · author Marc Weber · version 7.0
To count the number of matches of a pattern, use the substitute command with the n
flag. The following shows the number of times that pattern
matches text in the current buffer:
:%s/pattern//gn
Omit g
to display the number of lines where the pattern matches:
:%s/pattern//n
To restrict the count to a region of the text, specify a range instead of %
(%
means all lines). For example, the following counts the number of occurrences in lines 10 to 50 inclusive:
:10,50s/pattern//gn
The following counts the number of occurrences in the lines in the most recent visual selection.
:'<,'>s/pattern//gn
Word under cursor
To count the number of occurrences of the last used search pattern, you can leave out the pattern entirely:
:%s///gn
This makes it easy to count the number of occurrences of the word under the cursor: first press *
to search for the current word, then enter :%s///gn
to count all occurrences of that word.
To access this quickly, define a shortcut command like
map ,* *<C-O>:%s///gn<CR>
then typing ,*
in quick succession will run the following: *
finds the next match to the word under the cursor, <C-O>
(CTRL+O) returns the cursor to where it started, then :%s///gn
does the counting we want. Of course this also works with any choice of command instead of ,*
, and you can even overwrite the meaning of *
with nnoremap * *<C-O>:%s///gn<CR>
(see :help map
)
Comments
...you just became my personal hero...))
This thing is causing "Trailing characters" error in gvi editor....what might be the problem?
- Which thing? One problem could be that "gvi" is not necessarily the same as "gvim" and may not actually be Vim, but something else, or a very stripped-down version. But I'm only speculating here without version information about "gvi" and without knowing which specific command gives that error. --Fritzophrenic (talk) 17:05, October 25, 2016 (UTC)