Underline using dashes automatically

Tip 750 Printable Monobook Previous Next

created June 18, 2004 · complexity intermediate · author Chris X Edwards · version 5.7

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This tip takes a line of text like:

A Very Important Tip!

and changes it to two lines like this:

A Very Important Tip!
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This is particularly useful to highlight headings.

Add this to your vimrc file:

" Underline the current line with dashes in normal mode
nnoremap <F5> yyp<c-v>$r-

" Underline the current line with dashes in insert mode
inoremap <F5> <esc>yyp<c-v>$r-A

Of course you can use anything you want instead of - (= and _ spring to mind).

In case you want to get a line above and below the heading, do this in normal mode:

<F5>yykP

Using substitute

You can use the global and substitute commands (:help :g, :help :s) to underline all headings matching a pattern. For example, the following adds a row of dashes under each line that starts with "Chapter":

:g/^Chapter/t.|s/./-/g

It works by finding each matching line, then copying it (:help :t), then substituting each character (.) in the line.

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