7

I have a bunch of data, and I want to yank everything that matches the following regex to a register :

/'user': '[a-Z]*'

Is there any way to copy all the matches to a register in vanilla vim? I've looked at this question, but it only works for one result, after pressing 'n' to go to the next result, it will use '//e' again and go to the end of the next result, instead of the beginning.

I've also looked at this SO question. It's almost exactly what I'm looking for, except I can't figure out how to change it to work with particular matches instead of the lines they are on.

Community
  • 1
Marcus Buffett
  • 171

4 Answers4

10

This can be simply achieved, by running a :s command with the n flag set (which basically says, to not replace anything (but by using an \= in the replace part, you can still capture the matches (see :h sub-replace-special). So first let's clear register A:

qaq

Then you can capture your maches into register a by using:

:%s/'user': '[a-Z]*'/\=setreg('A', submatch(0), 'V')/gn

And paste your matches:

:put A

This needs at least Vim 7.4 (I forgot the actual patch number).

Christian Brabandt
  • 1,416
3

" clear the 'a' register

qaq

" global search and yank all lines ('A') into the 'a' register.

:g/'user': '[a-Z]*'/y A

Modify the part between :g/ and /y A as needed.

" paste into another file

"aP

broomdodger
  • 3,200
0

You can use the :YankMatches command from my ExtractMatches plugin:

:%YankMatches /'user': '[a-Z]*'/

Each match is put on a new line by default; to use another separator, there's an alternative form.

Ingo Karkat
  • 23,523
0

There's probably a better way (these are inefficient if we're talking about a really large number of entries -- it should be fine so long as we're not talking thousands and thousands), but the first thing that comes to mind is a recursive macro. First, turn of the wrapscan option so that searches that reach the end of the file won't loop around to the beginning again (otherwise you'll end up with an infinite loop):

:set nowrapscan

Then, make sure you have two clear registers:

qqq
qaq

Now, the magic:

qq/'user': '[a-Z]*'
"Ay//e
@qq

qq starts recording all your keystrokes to the register q. Using a capital letter makes vim append to that register rather than overwriting it. y//e yanks to the end of your search. @q calls the (currently-empty) q register as a macro, and the final q stops the recording. Then, simply:

@q
evilsoup
  • 14,056