Vim command to replace part of matched string

Question

Relatively new to vim search/replace commands and wondering how to replace part of matched string via vim commands.

E.g. If I have

printf(_UNICODE("Text and %d I want to preserve."), 20);

and I wish to get rid of the Unicode conversion and make it become

printf("Text and %d I want to preserve.", 20);

which means getting rid of the _UNICODE( and the ) but preserving the format string in between.

Can someone please help me come up with a vim command to do that and possibly explain?

Thanks a ton in advance! :)

This one is better /_UNICODE⏎f"di(2bvt,p Handles the case if the format string starts with ( — balki
– balki, Commented Sep 7, 2017 at 23:13
@balki Is there a way to apply these to all the occurrences in a file like %s....? — user3291342
– user3291342, Commented Sep 7, 2017 at 23:13
You can record in a macro and run it multiple times. But not like with %s — balki
– balki, Commented Sep 7, 2017 at 23:17
@balki Thanks for your response. I'd prefer an %s solution but I upvoted yours too. — user3291342
– user3291342, Commented Sep 7, 2017 at 23:26

EdmCoff · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-07 23:07:29Z

1

:s/_UNICODE(\([^)]*\))/\1/g

or

:%s/_UNICODE(\([^)]*\))/\1/g

Match "_UNICODE(" + not-a-closing-bracket + ")" and replace with just the not-a-closing-bracket part.

(%s to do all lines instead of current line)

answered Sep 7, 2017 at 23:07

EdmCoff

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5 Comments

balki Over a year ago

This will break if the text in the format string contains a )

user3291342 Over a year ago

Is \1 a register here? When I typed it in it replaced the not-a-closing-bracket part with "\1"... am I missing something here?

EdmCoff Over a year ago

@user3291342: The \1 should refer to the part of the regular expression between the first (in this case, only) ( and ) bits. I tested in MacVim and an HPUX vi and it works for me. Are you sure you copied the string exactly?

EdmCoff Over a year ago

@balki: That's a fair criticism. I am assuming a relatively known/simple use case. It could be modified to treat ") as the delimiter or made even more complicated to handle potential escaping of the " and ).

user3291342 Over a year ago

@EdmCoff That did not work on my editor vim plugin but worked in actual vim. Sorry for the confusion.

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