Write output from command line into file in vim

Question

I would like to insert at the end of each line the number of alphabetic characters on that line. To do this on one line is easy. I search using :s/\a//gn and get the occurrence of alphabetic characters in the command line and then A and space and enter the number.

My problem arises when I have so many lines that it becomes extremely tedious to do this. I am trying to create a macro but am having difficulty getting command line output into it. Is there a way to do this without resorting to *nix commands? I have access to a *nix box but not all the time.

So if my file had the following content:

abc2d4s
jd4a5ag
jdf7fjf
abdd5ff

I would like the output to look like this:

abc2d4s 5
jd4a5ag 5
jdf7fjf 6
abdd5ff 6

I was thinking if there was a way to get the replace output piped into the register somehow but cannot figure out how to do it, but maybe there is a better way.

Ingo Karkat · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-20 12:35:47Z

4

You can capture the output of the :s///gn command with :redir, but in this case, I would rather implement the counting via substitute() and :help sub-replace-expression:

:%s/.*/\=submatch(0) . ' ' . len(substitute(submatch(0), '\A', '', 'g'))/

This matches the entire line (.*), then removes all non-alphabetic characters (\A), and appends the length of the result. Note: Works only for ASCII characters (but \a covers only those, anyway)!

answered Jun 20, 2014 at 12:35

Ingo Karkat

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Ingo Karkat Over a year ago

@Kent: Thanks, I guess I saved some typing by using the inverse \A.

Kent · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-20 12:36:40Z

2

this cmd should give you that output:

%s/.*/\=submatch(0).' '.(len(submatch(0))-len(substitute(submatch(0),'\a','','g')))

answered Jun 20, 2014 at 12:36

Kent

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Comments

romainl · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-20 12:42:12Z

2

One way to do that would be to use a simple macro:

:%norm A <C-v><C-r>=col('.')-2<C-v><CR>

which should look like:

:%norm A ^R=col('.')-2^M

where we enter insert mode at the end of each line and insert a space followed by the column number of the last character.

A variant:

:%norm A^R=" ".len(getline('.'))^M

edited Jun 20, 2014 at 12:42

answered Jun 20, 2014 at 12:34

romainl

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