How to call a Vimscript function that has a range using local variables, from within another function?

Question

Here is an example that I am working with. It is intended to add a boilerplate to a file, and then comment out those lines using Vim BlockComment() plugin function. The goal is to mark the line number before I read from the file and after I have completed reading from the file, so that I can comment out the range of lines just inserted.

However, I am having a time figuring out what the syntax should be to indicate that range. The commented line below is my attempt to call a function with a given range using variables. The commented part has a syntax error, but, if I provide a hard-coded range as shown below, the script works. How do we put my range in as a variable in this case?

function! AddBoilerPlate()
    let s:beginLine = line(".")
    r /Users/danieljbrieckjr/myBolierPlate.txt
    exe "normal! joDate Created: " . strftime("%B %d, %Y")
    exe "normal! oLast Modified: " . strftime("%B %d, %Y")

    let s:endLine = line(".")

"--------------------------------------------------
"     s:beginLine, s:endLine call Comment()
"-------------------------------------------------- 

    1,3 call Comment()

endfunction

I.B. · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-25 07:47:32Z

13

One can prepare a string containing the target command, and then use :execute to run it:

:exec s:beginLine..','..s:endLine 'call Comment()'

edited Nov 25, 2023 at 7:47

answered Jan 22, 2012 at 12:44

I.B.

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6 Comments

Stephen Talley Over a year ago

What if you need the return value of Comment()?

I.B. Over a year ago

@StephenTalley: As far as I know, it is not possible. The simplest workaround is to create a helper function that takes the range line numbers as regular arguments, and call that the regular way.

I.B. Over a year ago

@athos: It’s the string concatenation operator. It is indeed not strictly necessary here, as the :execute command concatenates all its arguments inserting spaces in between, and the Vim command syntax allows for spaces in line range expressions, so :exec s:beginLine ',' s:endLine 'call Comment()' would work just as well. It is simply my preference to pass line ranges to :execute as ready-made single-string arguments like that.

athos Over a year ago

@ib. thanks for explanation. My confusion was, i thought the string concatenation operator is single dot ., but here comes a double dot .., after your explanation i googled and found .. is recommended for disambiguity. Learnt something new :)

I.B. Over a year ago

@athos: Yeah, historically, it was just ., but at some point in Vim 8 (see :helpg Add "\.\.") the .. version was introduced for disambiguation, which is now the required syntax in Vim9 script and in the regular Vim script dialects starting with version 2 (see :h scriptversion-2). For backward compatibility, both the . and .. concatenation operators work in default Vim script.

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