Substitution of metacharacters

[Bob von Knobloch]

Hi, I've searched all over but can't find an answer. How can one perform
commands like ':%s/\n/\r\r/g' (replacing newlines or tabs etc.) in the
gui's 'find and replace' dialogue?

Many thanks,

Bob
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[Tim Chase]

On 05/24/12 08:34, Bob von Knobloch wrote:
> Hi, I've searched all over but can't find an answer. How can one perform
> commands like ':%s/\n/\r\r/g' (replacing newlines or tabs etc.) in the
> gui's 'find and replace' dialogue?

Playing around with :promptrepl (the underlying command), it looks
like the *search* portion of it is happy to take various regexps.
However the replacement part only seems to accept literals.  Thus in
your example, it puts in a literal "\r\r" instead of two newlines.

So I guess my short answer based on testing is:  when using the gui
find-and-replace, there's no way to replace with anything but literals.

I'd be glad if someone could prove me wrong (it seems a peculiar
development choice to lose the parity with :substitute)

-tim



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[Ben Fritz]

On Thursday, May 24, 2012 8:34:03 AM UTC-5, Bob von Knobloch wrote:
> Hi, I've searched all over but can't find an answer. How can one perform
> commands like ':%s/\n/\r\r/g' (replacing newlines or tabs etc.) in the
> gui's 'find and replace' dialogue?
>

I tried replacing tabs, and also replacing newlines, with the GUI dialog (Edit->Find an Replace...)

Entering \t as the "Find what" pattern and "  " (two spaces) as the "Replace with" text worked as expected, replacing all tab characters with spaces.

Entering \n as the "Find what" and '.' as the "Replace with" text also worked as expected, joining all lines together with a '.' character in between.

Oh, I see...if a special character is in the "Replace with" text, it doesn't work as you are hoping. For example, with "Find what" as \\t and "Replace with" as \t, the dialog does nothing. The "Replace with" text seems to always be taken literally. The help does not really offer any information about the behavior of the find-replace dialog (:help :promptrepl). It looks like to replace with a special character, you somehow need to enter that special character in the dialog.

For some characters, you can do this by copy-pasting the desired literal character into the "Replace with" text. You can get it into the clipboard from within Vim with, for example,

  :let @+="\t"

Unfortunately, this does not work for linefeed characters, and probably other special unprintable characters will likewise not be available.

I'm not sure if there's a way to enter these characters directly in the dialog, but likely you'll need to use the command-line rather than the dialog for special patterns like this.

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[Roy Fulbright]

 

> Date: Thu, 24 May 2012 07:56:08 -0700

> From: [hidden email]
> To: [hidden email]
> CC: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: Substitution of metacharacters
>
> On Thursday, May 24, 2012 8:34:03 AM UTC-5, Bob von Knobloch wrote:
> > Hi, I've searched all over but can't find an answer. How can one perform
> > commands like ':%s/\n/\r\r/g' (replacing newlines or tabs etc.) in the
> > gui's 'find and replace' dialogue?
> >
>
> I tried replacing tabs, and also replacing newlines, with the GUI dialog (Edit->Find an Replace...)
>
> Entering \t as the "Find what" pattern and " " (two spaces) as the "Replace with" text worked as expected, replacing all tab characters with spaces.
>
> Entering \n as the "Find what" and '.' as the "Replace with" text also worked as expected, joining all lines together with a '.' character in between.
>
> Oh, I see...if a special character is in the "Replace with" text, it doesn't work as you are hoping. For example, with "Find what" as \\t and "Replace with" as \t, the dialog does nothing. The "Replace with" text seems to always be taken literally. The help does not really offer any information about the behavior of the find-replace dialog (:help :promptrepl). It looks like to replace with a special character, you somehow need to enter that special character in the dialog.
>
> For some characters, you can do this by copy-pasting the desired literal character into the "Replace with" text. You can get it into the clipboard from within Vim with, for example,
>
> :let @+="\t"
>
> Unfortunately, this does not work for linefeed characters, and probably other special unprintable characters will likewise not be available.
>
> I'm not sure if there's a way to enter these characters directly in the dialog, but likely you'll need to use the command-line rather than the dialog for special patterns like this.
>
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try this:

 

Find what:  \n

Replace with: \="\x20"

 

to replace all newlines with a space

 

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[Bob von Knobloch]

On 24/05/12 19:20, Roy Fulbright wrote:

>
>
>
>
>> Date: Thu, 24 May 2012 07:56:08 -0700
>> From: [hidden email]
>> To: [hidden email]
>> CC: [hidden email]
>> Subject: Re: Substitution of metacharacters
>>
>> On Thursday, May 24, 2012 8:34:03 AM UTC-5, Bob von Knobloch wrote:
>>> Hi, I've searched all over but can't find an answer. How can one perform
>>> commands like ':%s/\n/\r\r/g' (replacing newlines or tabs etc.) in the
>>> gui's 'find and replace' dialogue?
>>>
>>
>> I tried replacing tabs, and also replacing newlines, with the GUI dialog (Edit->Find an Replace...)
>>
>> Entering \t as the "Find what" pattern and " " (two spaces) as the "Replace with" text worked as expected, replacing all tab characters with spaces.
>>
>> Entering \n as the "Find what" and '.' as the "Replace with" text also worked as expected, joining all lines together with a '.' character in between.
>>
>> Oh, I see...if a special character is in the "Replace with" text, it doesn't work as you are hoping. For example, with "Find what" as \\t and "Replace with" as \t, the dialog does nothing. The "Replace with" text seems to always be taken literally. The help does not really offer any information about the behavior of the find-replace dialog (:help :promptrepl). It looks like to replace with a special character, you somehow need to enter that special character in the dialog.
>>
>> For some characters, you can do this by copy-pasting the desired literal character into the "Replace with" text. You can get it into the clipboard from within Vim with, for example,
>>
>> :let @+="\t"
>>
>> Unfortunately, this does not work for linefeed characters, and probably other special unprintable characters will likewise not be available.
>>
>> I'm not sure if there's a way to enter these characters directly in the dialog, but likely you'll need to use the command-line rather than the dialog for special patterns like this.
>>
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>
> try this:
>
> Find what:  \n
> Replace with: \="\x20"
>
> to replace all newlines with a space
>      
>

Nope, the text ' \="\x20" ' gets inserted literally.
Thanks anyway,

Bob

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[Christian Brabandt]

Hi Bob!

On Do, 24 Mai 2012, Bob von Knobloch wrote:

> Hi, I've searched all over but can't find an answer. How can one perform
> commands like ':%s/\n/\r\r/g' (replacing newlines or tabs etc.) in the
> gui's 'find and replace' dialogue?

Not possible, the replace text is escaped:

,----[ gui.c ]-
|5276  ga_concat(&ga, (char_u *)"/");
|5277                                         /* escape / and \ */
|5278  p = vim_strsave_escaped(repl_text, (char_u *)"/\\");
`----

Here is an experimental patch against the gtk gui, that adds an extra
flag, and allows to replace with special chars ,e.g. \t for Tab

Looking at the dialog, it could possibly also get some more
possibilities, e.g. a confirm/undo button, perhaps even more.

regards,
Christian

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[Tony Mechelynck]

On 24/05/12 15:34, Bob von Knobloch wrote:
> Hi, I've searched all over but can't find an answer. How can one perform
> commands like ':%s/\n/\r\r/g' (replacing newlines or tabs etc.) in the
> gui's 'find and replace' dialogue?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Bob
>

If the menus don't do what you want, use the keyboard. Typing

        :%s/\n/\r\r

followed by Enter (no /g needed since there can be only one end-of-line
per line) will add an empty line after every line in the file. Not what
you'd want to do every day, but it ought to work.

Similarly, you can assign all that to one key by means of

        :map <F2> :%s/<Bslash>n/<Bslash>r<Bslash>r<CR>

and/or

        :vmap <F2> :s/<Bslash>n/<Bslash>r<Bslash>r<CR>

(the vmap would apply the substitute to all lines of the current visual
selection).

See
        :help :s
        :help 'magic'
        :help sub-replace-special
        :help map.txt


Best regards,
Tony.
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[Bob von Knobloch]

On 25/05/12 04:18, Tony Mechelynck wrote:

> If the menus don't do what you want, use the keyboard. Typing
>
>     :%s/\n/\r\r
>

<snip>

> Best regards,
> Tony.

Thanks Tony, I know how to use the keyboard to get what I want done, it
just niggles when the gui doesn't work the same way, especially when I'm
trying to show someone how to do it and have to explain that the 2
methods (command vs. gui) are not the same. It seems like an oversight
somehow.

Bob

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[Bob von Knobloch]

On 24/05/12 22:14, Christian Brabandt wrote:

> Hi Bob!
>
> On Do, 24 Mai 2012, Bob von Knobloch wrote:
>
>> Hi, I've searched all over but can't find an answer. How can one perform
>> commands like ':%s/\n/\r\r/g' (replacing newlines or tabs etc.) in the
>> gui's 'find and replace' dialogue?
>
> Not possible, the replace text is escaped:
>
> ,----[ gui.c ]-
> |5276  ga_concat(&ga, (char_u *)"/");
> |5277                                         /* escape / and \ */
> |5278  p = vim_strsave_escaped(repl_text, (char_u *)"/\\");
> `----
>
> Here is an experimental patch against the gtk gui, that adds an extra
> flag, and allows to replace with special chars ,e.g. \t for Tab
>
> Looking at the dialog, it could possibly also get some more
> possibilities, e.g. a confirm/undo button, perhaps even more.
>
> regards,
> Christian
>

Thanks Christian,
I really wanted to know if I had missed something. This demonstrates
that the gui cannot replace these characters. I don't want to build my
own version, mainly because I can use the command line. It's when I try
to explain to others (who have the 'standard' issue gvim), that it seems
strange that the 2 input methods are different. However, that's how it is.
Thanks very much for you efforts.

Bob

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[Tony Mechelynck]

On 25/05/12 09:38, Bob von Knobloch wrote:

> On 25/05/12 04:18, Tony Mechelynck wrote:
>
>> If the menus don't do what you want, use the keyboard. Typing
>>
>>      :%s/\n/\r\r
>>
>
> <snip>
>
>> Best regards,
>> Tony.
>
> Thanks Tony, I know how to use the keyboard to get what I want done, it
> just niggles when the gui doesn't work the same way, especially when I'm
> trying to show someone how to do it and have to explain that the 2
> methods (command vs. gui) are not the same. It seems like an oversight
> somehow.
>
> Bob
>

Maybe it is. With Vim, the whole menu subsystem is a kind of aftersight,
sometimes that was added after-the-fact, even though in a console Vim
compiled with +menu (or, on Unix, when using a GUI-enabled Vim in
console mode) it is quite easy to access the menus even in the console.

Best regards,
Tony.
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[Chris Jones-44]

On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 10:53:27AM EDT, Tim Chase wrote:
> On 05/24/12 08:34, Bob von Knobloch wrote:

> > Hi, I've searched all over but can't find an answer. How can one
> > perform commands like ':%s/\n/\r\r/g' (replacing newlines or tabs
> > etc.) in the gui's 'find and replace' dialogue?

> Playing around with :promptrepl (the underlying command), it looks
> like the *search* portion of it is happy to take various regexps.
> However the replacement part only seems to accept literals.  Thus in
> your example, it puts in a literal "\r\r" instead of two newlines.

Search/replace behavior in the GUI is not only different than in the
console version but appears to lead to inconsistencies: try a search
‘.*’ for instance and compare with ‘\s\s’.

> So I guess my short answer based on testing is:  when using the gui
> find-and-replace, there's no way to replace with anything but literals.
>
> I'd be glad if someone could prove me wrong (it seems a peculiar
> development choice to lose the parity with :substitute)

+1 .. (fwiw, since I don't use the GUI).

Would that be worth a feature/enhancement request?

In the ELinks text-mode browser, e.g. the popup dialog has the following
checkboxes:

( ) Normal search ( ) Regexp search (X) Extended regexp search

There are probably other examples of this feature that are more relevant
to the GUI world but perhaps Vim could have a ‘Regex’ checkbox: checking
it would activate regex mode both for search & replace..?

CJ

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[Christian Brabandt]

On Fri, May 25, 2012 11:32, Chris Jones wrote:
> Search/replace behavior in the GUI is not only different than in the
> console version but appears to lead to inconsistencies: try a search
> ‘.*’ for instance and compare with ‘\s\s’.

I think the search/replace dialog uses the \V atom to make the
search "very nomagic", so you need to use \.\*

It seems the windows version of the replace dialog is also missing a
direction radio-button.

regards,
Christian

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[Chris Jones-44]

On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 05:47:35AM EDT, Christian Brabandt wrote:
> On Fri, May 25, 2012 11:32, Chris Jones wrote:

> > Search/replace behavior in the GUI is not only different than in the
> > console version but appears to lead to inconsistencies: try a search
> > ‘.*’ for instance and compare with ‘\s\s’.

> I think the search/replace dialog uses the \V atom to make the
> search "very nomagic", so you need to use \.\*

Yes, I didn't mention it in my post but I did check the GUI's setting by
a ‘:set magic?’ and noticed that it was (recommended for portability's
sake by the manual..) that it is also set to ‘magic’ in the GUI.. same
as the console version.

Do you mean that the code overrides this setting for the GUI search..?

Anyway, I don't use the GUI so it doesn't affect me but I was thinking
that there may be real world cases where possible inconsistencies (if
there are any) might lead to false positives/negatives.. making the
search functionality unreliable for the user even when he's trying to
search on a regex.. If so, and depending on the context this might not
be a good thing.. (?)

CJ

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[Chris Jones-44]

On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 06:00:46AM EDT, Chris Jones wrote:

> Anyway, I don't use the GUI so it doesn't affect me but I was thinking
> that there may be real world cases where possible inconsistencies (if
> there are any) might lead to false positives/negatives.. making the
> search functionality unreliable for the user even when he's trying to
> search on a regex.. If so, and depending on the context this might not
> be a good thing.. (?)

oops.. s/when he's trying/when he's *not* trying/

CJ

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[Ben Fritz]

On Thursday, May 24, 2012 3:14:35 PM UTC-5, Christian Brabandt wrote:
>
> Looking at the dialog, it could possibly also get some more
> possibilities, e.g. a confirm/undo button, perhaps even more.
>

Well, there's this in todo.txt:

7   More features in the find/replace dialog:
    - regexp on/off
    - search in selection/buffer/all buffers/directory
       when all buffers/directory is used:
        - filter for file name
       when directory is used:
        - subdirectory on/off
        - top directory browser

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[Ben Fritz]

On Friday, May 25, 2012 5:00:46 AM UTC-5, Chris Jones wrote:

> On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 05:47:35AM EDT, Christian Brabandt wrote:
> > On Fri, May 25, 2012 11:32, Chris Jones wrote:
>
> > > Search/replace behavior in the GUI is not only different than in the
> > > console version but appears to lead to inconsistencies: try a search
> > > ‘.*’ for instance and compare with ‘\s\s’.
>
> > I think the search/replace dialog uses the \V atom to make the
> > search "very nomagic", so you need to use \.\*
>
> Yes, I didn't mention it in my post but I did check the GUI's setting by
> a ‘:set magic?’ and noticed that it was (recommended for portability's
> sake by the manual..) that it is also set to ‘magic’ in the GUI.. same
> as the console version.
>
> Do you mean that the code overrides this setting for the GUI search..?
>

Yes...kind of. The code for the GUI automatically inserts \V in the search pattern, which is a flag for "very nomagic", which is not even settable via an option. The \V flag will override any 'magic' option setting.

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[Chris Jones-44]

On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 10:10:49AM EDT, Ben Fritz wrote:
> On Friday, May 25, 2012 5:00:46 AM UTC-5, Chris Jones wrote:

[..]

> > Do you mean that the code overrides this setting for the GUI
> > search..?

> Yes...kind of. The code for the GUI automatically inserts \V in the
> search pattern, which is a flag for "very nomagic", which is not even
> settable via an option. The \V flag will override any 'magic' option
> setting.

So it appears to be..

Maybe the doc should mention that ‘very nomagic’ that is the default
option when you do a search via the GUI dialog. I'd always wondered what
that particular option was meant for.

CJ

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[Tim Chase]

On 05/25/12 14:17, Chris Jones wrote:

>> Yes...kind of. The code for the GUI automatically inserts \V in
>> the search pattern, which is a flag for "very nomagic", which
>> is not even settable via an option. The \V flag will override
>> any 'magic' option setting.
>
> So it appears to be..
>
> Maybe the doc should mention that ‘very nomagic’ that is the
> default option when you do a search via the GUI dialog. I'd
> always wondered what that particular option was meant for.

The docs for :promptrepl should also include that the replacement is
a literal, not making use of any metachars such as "&" or "\".

-tim


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[Christian Brabandt]

On Do, 24 Mai 2012, Christian Brabandt wrote:

> On Do, 24 Mai 2012, Bob von Knobloch wrote:
> > Hi, I've searched all over but can't find an answer. How can one perform
> > commands like ':%s/\n/\r\r/g' (replacing newlines or tabs etc.) in the
> > gui's 'find and replace' dialogue?
>
> Not possible, the replace text is escaped:
>
> ,----[ gui.c ]-
> |5276  ga_concat(&ga, (char_u *)"/");
> |5277                                         /* escape / and \ */
> |5278  p = vim_strsave_escaped(repl_text, (char_u *)"/\\");
> `----
>
> Here is an experimental patch against the gtk gui, that adds an extra
> flag, and allows to replace with special chars ,e.g. \t for Tab
>
> Looking at the dialog, it could possibly also get some more
> possibilities, e.g. a confirm/undo button, perhaps even more.

Here is an even improved version of the patch, which adds the buttons
Undo and Redo to the gtk and motif version and which adds an extra
parameter whether to search/replace literally.

regards,
Christian

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[Christian Brabandt]

On Sa, 26 Mai 2012, Christian Brabandt wrote:

> On Do, 24 Mai 2012, Christian Brabandt wrote:
> > On Do, 24 Mai 2012, Bob von Knobloch wrote:
> > > Hi, I've searched all over but can't find an answer. How can one perform
> > > commands like ':%s/\n/\r\r/g' (replacing newlines or tabs etc.) in the
> > > gui's 'find and replace' dialogue?
> >
> > Not possible, the replace text is escaped:
> >
> > ,----[ gui.c ]-
> > |5276  ga_concat(&ga, (char_u *)"/");
> > |5277                                         /* escape / and \ */
> > |5278  p = vim_strsave_escaped(repl_text, (char_u *)"/\\");
> > `----
> >
> > Here is an experimental patch against the gtk gui, that adds an extra
> > flag, and allows to replace with special chars ,e.g. \t for Tab
> >
> > Looking at the dialog, it could possibly also get some more
> > possibilities, e.g. a confirm/undo button, perhaps even more.
>
> Here is an even improved version of the patch, which adds the buttons
> Undo and Redo to the gtk and motif version and which adds an extra
> parameter whether to search/replace literally.

One more update:
     - Replace should work better now (and works like in the current
       version of Gvim).
     - When using REPLACE, the cursor is positioned at the next match,
       but it doesn't take into account, that it could match at the
       current cursor position (so adding the flag SEARCH_START to the
       do_search function) (simple example, search for \. in the gui and
       replace it by A, you'll notice, it will only replace every other
       character).

regards,
Christian
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