Regex inside VIM to reuse part of the string and replace the other

Question

honestly bemused and I didn't expect to be asking this but here goes.

In side VIM, and only VIM, I want to perform a global search and replace. My target text is:

51099   analgesic
43045   analgesic
70145   analgesic
52338   analgesic
41214
55309
34373
47003
50659
51327

This goes on for several thousand lines. For all those lines that do not end "\tanalgesic" (notice the tab), I would like to retain the number and insert "\tanalgesic". I've tried several ways, none of which works (obviously).

Outside of VIM (in a general regex checker), [0-9]+$ finds all instances of "one or more digits and the end of the line". Within VIM, this does not work (:/ will have been added to represent moving into command mode then "/" for a search). I'm so baffled by why this should be the case.

Although this does not work, I expect the solution is going to look similar:

:%s/[0-9]+$/(1)\tanalgesic/g

The fourth bird · Accepted Answer · 2022-10-17 17:36:16Z

2

You could use for example vim very magic mode with \v

Use \1 for a backreference to group 1.

:%s/\v(\d+$)/\1\tanalgesic/g

The command without very magic mode, with escaped parenthesis for the group, and the escaped plus sign for the quantifier:

%s/\([0-9]\+$\)/\1\tanalgesic/g
|  |      |     |             |
|  |      |     |             ^ All occurrences 
|  |      |     ^^ Backreference to group 1
|  |      ^^ Escaped plus sign
|  ^^ Escaped parenthesis for group 1
^ Substitute in whole file

Output

51099    analgesic
43045    analgesic
70145    analgesic
52338    analgesic
41214    analgesic
55309    analgesic
34373    analgesic
47003    analgesic
50659    analgesic
51327    analgesic

See http://vimregex.com/ for more information.

edited Oct 17, 2022 at 17:36

answered Oct 17, 2022 at 17:17

The fourth bird

165k16 gold badges61 silver badges75 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

Anthony Nash Over a year ago

That worked! Thanks. Honestly, I was struggling with this. A bit embarrassing.

The fourth bird Over a year ago

@AnthonyNash Not at all, glad to help you.

Alan Gómez · Accepted Answer · 2023-10-29 04:50:43Z

0

A very specific regex that match exactly what stated at first post is:

:%s/\(^\(\(.*analgesic.*\)\@!.\)*$\)/\1\tanalgesic

This part ^$\(.*analgesic.*$\@!.\)*$ match all lines that not contains analgesic word.

answered Oct 29, 2023 at 4:50

Alan Gómez

3881 gold badge4 silver badges11 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Regex inside VIM to reuse part of the string and replace the other

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related