Practical Vim

Chapter 14Substitution

You might think that the substitute command is just for simple find and replace operations, but in fact, it’s one of the most powerful Ex commands available. By the time we’ve reached the end of this chapter, we’ll have learned all the many roles that the substitute command can play, from simple to very complex.

We’ll look at a few tips and tricks that allow us to compose substitution commands more quickly by reusing the last search pattern. We’ll also look at a special case, where Vim allows us to eyeball every occurrence before confirming the substitution. We’ll learn how we can fill out the replacement field without typing, and we’ll examine some of the special behaviors that are available through the replacement ...