I have a list of words:
bau
ceu
diu
fou
gauI want to turn that list into:
byau
cyeu
dyiu
fyou
gyauI unsuccessfully tried the command:
:%s/(\w)(\w\w)/\1y\2/gGiven that this doesn't work, what do I have to change to make the regex capture groups work in Vim?
One way to fix this is by ensuring the pattern is enclosed by escaped parentheses:
:%s/\(\w\)\(\w\w\)/\1y\2/gSlightly shorter (and more magic-al) is to use \v, meaning that in the pattern after it all ASCII characters except '0'-'9', 'a'-'z', 'A'-'Z' and '_' have a special meaning:
:%s/\v(\w)(\w\w)/\1y\2/gIf you don't want to escape the capturing groups with backslashes (this is what you've missed), prepend \v to turn Vim's regular expression engine into very magic mode:
:%s/\v(\w)(\w\w)/\1y\2/g
:exmode; is there a way to do it in gvim find/replace dialogue box? – JJoao May 5 '15 at 16:30 \v... regexp work find; in the replacement string, & works but \ are protected (\1\r are lost) – JJoao May 6 '15 at 8:11 :s) via inputdialog() and a bit of Vimscript. – Ingo Karkat May 6 '15 at 8:32 \1 \r treatment is a gvim bug. I will try to post it in some vim specific list. In the meanwhile I will try my one vimscript-inputdialog. – JJoao May 6 '15 at 9:10 You can also use this pattern which is shorter:
:%s/^./&y%s applies the pattern to the whole file.^. matches the first character of the line.&y adds the y after the pattern.You also have to escape the Grouping paranthesis:
:%s/\(\w\)\(\w\w\)/\1y\2/gThat does the trick.
:%norm ay<CR>. – romainl Nov 11 '13 at 9:12l, enter Visual Block mode withCtrl+v, mark whole column withShift+gfollowed byl, then enter Insert mode withShift+iand input 'y'. 7 keystrokes including finishingEscto exit Insert mode. Not posting as an answer because it's not really about capture groups (which is what I searched for when I found this). :-) – LIttle Ancient Forest Kami Aug 21 '16 at 11:23