Search and replace

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Tip 31 Previous Next created March 7, 2001 · complexity basic · author Anon · version 5.7

Use the :substitute command to search for a text pattern, and replace it with a text string.

There are many options, but these are what you most probably want:

:%s/foo/bar/g: Find each occurrence of 'foo', and replace it with 'bar'.

:%s/foo/bar/gc: Change each 'foo' to 'bar', but ask for confirmation first.

:%s/\<foo\>/bar/gc: Change only whole words exactly matching 'foo' to 'bar'; ask for confirmation.

:%s/foo/bar/gci: Change each 'foo' (case insensitive) to 'bar'; ask for confirmation.

:%s/foo/bar/gcI: Change each 'foo' (case sensitive) to 'bar'; ask for confirmation.

The g flag means global — each occurrence in the line is changed, rather than just the first.

Search range:

The % in :%s applies the substitute to every line in the buffer, rather than just the current line.

:5,12s/foo/bar/g will change each 'foo' to 'bar' for all lines between line 5 and line 12.

:'a,'bs/foo/bar/g will change each 'foo' to 'bar' for all lines between marks a and b.

:.,$s/foo/bar/g will change each 'foo' to 'bar' for all lines between the current line (.) and the last line ($).

:.,+2s/foo/bar/g will change each 'foo' to 'bar' for the current line (.) and the two next lines (+2).

(Note that :%s is equivalent to :1,$s.)

When searching:

\/ is / (use backslash + forward slash to search for forward slash)

\t is tab, \s is whitespace

\n is newline, \r is CR (carriage return = Ctrl-M = ^M)

When replacing:

\r is newline, \n is a null byte (0x00).

\& is ampersand (& is the search pattern).

You can use other delimiters with substitute:

:s#http://www.example.com/index.html#http://example.com/#

This can be a very helpful technique, because you can avoid escaping a / character if you use something other than / for a delimiter, and some delimiters such as ; may be faster/easier to type.

Save typing by using \zs and \ze to set the start and end of a pattern. For example, instead of:

You could try:

[edit] Using registers

:%s/foo/<c-r>a/g: Substitute each 'foo' by the content of register 'a'.; <c-r>a means: Press Ctrl-R then A. The content of register 'a' will be immediately inserted.

:%s/foo/\=@a/g: Substitute each 'foo' by the content of register 'a'.; \=@a is a reference to register 'a'. The content of register 'a' will not be shown. This is useful if register 'a' contains many lines of text.

:%s/<c-r>//bar/g: Substitute the last search pattern (<c-r>/) by 'bar'.; Hint: If the substitute pattern is omitted, the last search pattern is used. See 'r' flag.

:%s/<c-r>*/bar/g: Substitute the visual selection (saved in the '*' register) by 'bar'.

See Paste registers in search or colon commands instead of using the clipboard.

[edit] Special cases

For substituting patterns with a corresponding case-sensitive text, Michael Geddes's keepcase plugin can be used, e.g.:

:%SubstituteCase/\cHello/goodBye/g: Substitute 'Hello hello helLo HELLO' by 'Goodbye goodbye goodBye GOODBYE'

For changing the offsets in a patch file (line number of a block), this little snippet can be used:

s/^@@ -$\d\+$,$\d\+$ +$\d\+$,$\d\+$ @@$/\="@@ -".eval(submatch(1)+offsetdiff).",".submatch(2)." +".eval(submatch(3)+offsetdiff).",".submatch(4)." @@"/g

Useful when we want to strip some blocks from a patch, without patch having to complain about offset differences.

NOTE: ; Should try to make the expression more compact, but don't know how without having the possibility of modifying unwanted lines

[edit] See also – using substitute

[edit] See also – substitute in buffers/files

[edit] References

[edit] Comments

TO DO
The large "see also" section may be useful to readers. We need to merge some of the related tips (but don't make the result too complex). I included the tip numbers to help editors keep track.

[edit] Open questions

Is it possible to search for the next (or previous) unmatched and therefore highlighted brace?

Is it possible to use a register as a search pattern? E.g. replace the content of register 'a' by the content of register 'b':

:%s/\=@a/\=@b/g (doesn't work)

AFAIK, we can't use expressions as the {pattern} parameter of :substitute. Actually, using registers is just a special case of the general use of expression. \= is about using a dynamic expression as the replacement {string}. See :help sub-replace-special

--Luc Hermitte 11:59, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

If the content of register 'a' is inserted by <c-r>a, the above task can be accomplished. However, if register 'a' contains line breaks, they are inserted as ^M and not found. If they are manually replaced by '\n', they are found correctly.

Then use <c-r>=substitute(@a, "\n", '\\n', "g") instead of <c-r>a