I am a novice TCL programmer. Here I go - My 1st post with stackoverflow forum.
I would like to write a regular expression that matches any & only the strings starts with character A and ends with B. Whatever the characters coming inbetween should be displayed. For instance AXIOMB as an input from the user which starts with A & end with character B.
Here is my try
regexp { (^A([C-Z]+)B$)}
Thank you
You're very close:
set stringToTest "AXIOMB"
set match [regexp {^A([C-Z]*)B$} $stringToTest -> substring]
if {$match} {
puts "The middle was $substring"
}
(The -> is actually an unusual variable name. But here I'm using that symbol because it looks better than using the otherwise-equivalent someRandomDummyVariable. :-))
If you're seeking to get the string to test from the command line or the console, here's how:
Command line arguments (without the name of the Tcl interpreter or the script) are presented as a list in the global argv list variable. The first one is thus [lindex $::argv 0].
A line can be read from the console via the gets command.
set line [gets stdin]; # you can use other channel names too, of course
Note that, unlike in C, gets in Tcl is strongly defended against buffer overflows and the (almost) full power of scanf() is about equivalent to scan [gets stdin] ... (except for some formats excluded for security reasons).
Related
I am trying to search a text file that will return a result if more than one word is found in that line. I don't see this explained in the documentation and I have tried various loops with no success.
What I would like to do is something similar to this:
$read(name.txt, s, word1|word2|word3)
or even something like this:
$read(name.txt, w, word1*|*word2*|*word3)
I don't know RegEx that well so I'm assuming this can be done with that but I don't know how to do that.
The documentation in the client self is good but I also recommend this site: http://en.wikichip.org/wiki/mirc. And with your problem there is a nice article : http://en.wikichip.org/wiki/mirc/text_files
All the info is taken from there. So credits to wikichip.
alias testForString {
while ($read(file.txt, nw, *test*, $calc($readn + 1))) {
var %line = $v1
; you can add your own words in the regex, seperate them with a pipe (|)
noop $regex(%line,/(word1|word2|word3|test)/))
echo -a Amount of results: $regml(0)
}
}
$readn is an identifier that returns the line that $read() matched. It is used to start searching for the pattern on the next line. Which is in this case test.
In the code above, $readn starts at 0. We use $calc() to start at line 1. Every match $read() will start searching on the next line. When no more matches are after the line specified $read will return $null - terminating the loop.
The w switch is used to use a wildcard in your search
The n switch prevents evaluating the text it reads as if it was mSL code. In almost EVERY case you must use the n switch. Except if you really need it. Improper use of the $read() identifier without the 'n' switch could leave your script highly vulnerable.
The result is stored in a variable named %line to use it later in case you need it.
After that we use a noop to execute a regex to match your needs. In this case you can use $regml(0) to find the amount of matches which are specified in your regex search. Using an if-statement you can see if there are two or more matches.
Hope you find this helpful, if there's anything unclear, I will try to explain it better.
EDIT
#cp022
I can't comment, so I'll post my comment here, so how does that help in any way to read content from a text file?
Two of my favorite Vim features are the ability to apply standard operators to lines matching a regex, and the ability to filter a selection or range of lines through an external command. But can these two ideas be combined?
For example, I have a text file that I use as a lab notebook, with notes from different dates separated by a line of dashes. I can do something like delete all the dash-lines with something like :% g/^-/d. But let's say I wanted to resize all the actual text lines, without touching those dash lines.
For a single paragraph, this would be something like {!}fmt. But how can this be applied to all the non-dash paragraphs? When I try what seems the logical thing, and just chain these two together with :% v/^-/!fmt, that doesn't work. (In fact, it seems to crash Vim...)
Is there a way to connect these two ideas, and only pass lines (not) matching a pattern into an external command like fmt?
Consider how the :global command works.
:global (and :v) make two passes through the buffer,
first marking each line that matches,
then executing the given command on the marked lines.
Thus if you can come up with a command – be it an Ex command or a command-line tool – and an associated range that can be applied to each matching line (and range), you have a winner.
For example, assuming that your text is soft-wrapped and your paragraphs are simply lines that don't begin with minus, here's how to reformat the paragraphs:
:v/^-/.!fmt -72
Here we used the range . "current line" and thus filtered every matching line through fmt. More complicated ranges work, too. For instance, if your text were hard-wrapped and paragraphs were defined as "from a line beginning with minus, up until the next blank line" you could instead use this:
:g/^-/.,'}!fmt -72
Help topics:
:h multi-repeat
:h :range!
:h :range
One way to do it may be applying the command to the lines matching the pattern 'not containing only dashes'
The solution I would try the is something like (not tested):
:g/\v^(-+)#!/normal V!fmt
EDIT I was doing some experiments and I think a recurvie macro should work for you
first of all set nowrapscan:
set nowrapscan
To prevent the recursive macro executing more than you want.
Then you make a search:
/\v^(-+)#!
Test if pressing n and p works with your pattern and tune it up if needed
After that, start recording the macro
qqn:.!awk '{print $2}'^M$
In this case I use awk as an example .! means filter current line with an external program
Then to make the macro recursive just append the string '#q' to the register #q
let #q .= '#q'
And move to the beggining of the buffer to apply the recursive macro and make the modifications:
gg#q
Then you are done. Hope this helps
I have an issue while trying to read a member of a list like \\server\directory
The issue comes when I try to get this variable using the lindex command, that proceeds with TCL substitution, so the result is:
\serverdirectory
Then, I think I need to use a regsub command to avoid the backslash substitution, but I did not get the correct proceedure.
An example of what I want should be:
set mistring "\\server\directory"
regsub [appropriate regular expresion here]
puts "mistring: '$mistring'" ==> "mistring: '\\server\directory'"
I have checked some posts around this, and keep the \\ is ok, but I still have problems when trying to keep always a single \ followed by any other character that could come here.
UPDATE: specific example. What I am actually trying to keep is the initial format of an element in a list. The list is received by an outer application. The original code is something like this:
set mytable $__outer_list_received
puts "Table: '$mytable'"
for { set i 0 } { $i < [llength $mitabla] } { incr i } {
set row [lindex $mytable $i]
puts "Row: '$row'"
set elements [lindex $row 0]
puts "Elements: '$elements'"
}
The output of this, in this case is:
Table: '{{
address \\server\directory
filename foo.bar
}}'
Row: '{
address \\server\directory
filename foo.bar
}'
Elements: '
address \\server\directory
filename foo.bar
'
So I try to get the value of address (in this specific case, \\server\directory) in order to write it in a configuration file, keeping the original format and data.
I hope this clarify the problem.
If you don't want substitutions, put the problematic string inside curly braces.
% puts "\\server\directory"
\serverdirectory
and it's not what you want. But
% puts {\\server\directory}
\\server\directory
as you need.
Since this is fundamentally a problem on Windows (and Tcl always treats backslashes in double-quotes as instructions to perform escaping substitutions) you should consider a different approach (otherwise you've got the problem that the backslashes are gone by the time you can apply code to “fix” them). Luckily, you've got two alternatives. The first is to put the string in {braces} to disable substitutions, just like a C# verbatim string literal (but that uses #"this" instead). The second is perhaps more suitable:
set mistring [file nativename "//server/directory"]
That ensures that the platform native directory separator is used on Windows (and nowadays does nothing on other platforms; back when old MacOS9 was supported it was much more magical). Normally, you only need this sort of thing if you are displaying full pathnames to users (usually a bad idea, GUI-wise) or if you are passing the name to some API that doesn't like forward slashes (notably when going as an argument to a program via exec but there are other places where the details leak through, such as if you're using the dde, tcom or twapi packages).
A third, although ugly, option is to double the slashes. \\ instead of \, and \ instead of \, while using double quotes. When the substitution occurs it should give you what you want. Of course, this will not help much if you do the substitution a second time.
i have a text file in a particular format..
!c_xyz|crby=112|crdate=12jun11|mdby=112|mddate=12jun11|Desc=xyz
asdasda........................................................
asddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
!c_abc|crby=112|crdate=12jun11|mdby=112|mddate=12jun11|Desc=xyz...
I need a regular expression to reformat this file using Find and Replace - Visual Studio. The Desc field value has overflowed onto next lines. i need to move them back to the actual line. Final string should be like
!c_xyz|crby=112|crdate=12jun11|mdby=112|mddate=12jun11|Desc=xyzsdasda.........asdddddd..
!c_abc|crby=112|crdate=12jun11|mdby=112|mddate=12jun11|Desc=xyz...
I need an RE for "desc=" followed by anything until the next ! symbol
find Desc=([^\|\r\n]+)[\r\n](([^!\r\n][^\r\n]+[\r\n])*), replace with Desc=\1\2 and repeat until every line starts with ! (you can test this using ^[^!] as a search expr which should find nothing).
alternatively find [\r\n]+, replace with the empty string. thereafter find !, replace with \r\n!. this suggestion has 2 drawbacks. it temporarily produces very long lines which your editor (notably vs) may or may not have difficulties with and processes descriptions containing ! incorrectly.
addendum:
your input seems to be fixed format up to the Desc section. if it is indeed, you can apply alternative #2, step 1, being followed by a search/replace run using (!.{53}\|Desc=)/[\r\n]\1.
As mentioned in the comments by #X3074861X, you can use Notepad++.
Input:
!c_xyz|crby=112|crdate=12jun11|mdby=112|mddate=12jun11|Desc=xyz
asdasda........................................................
asddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
!c_abc|crby=112|crdate=12jun11|mdby=112|mddate=12jun11|Desc=xyz...
For the find and replace, select the mode as Regular expression with the options as follows:
Find what: \r\n[^!]
Leave Replace with blank.
Output:
!c_xyz|crby=112|crdate=12jun11|mdby=112|mddate=12jun11|Desc=xyzsdasda........................................................sddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
!c_abc|crby=112|crdate=12jun11|mdby=112|mddate=12jun11|Desc=xyz...
Screenshot:
This is my string:
"this is my sentence"
I would like to have this output:
"sentence my is this"
I would like to select a few words on a line (in a buffer) and reverse it word by word.
Can anyone help me?
It's not totally clear what the context is here: you could be talking about text in a line in a buffer or about a string stored in a VimScript variable.
note: Different interpretations of the question led to various approaches and solutions.
There are some "old updates" that start about halfway through that have been rendered more or less obsolete by a plugin mentioned just above that section. I've left them in because they may provide useful info for some people.
full line replacement
So to store the text from the current line in the current buffer in a vimscript variable, you do
let words = getline('.')
And then to reverse their order, you just do
let words = join(reverse(split(words)))
If you want to replace the current line with the reversed words, you do
call setline('.', words)
You can do it in one somewhat inscrutable line with
call setline('.', join(reverse(split(getline('.')))))
or even define a command that does that with
command! ReverseLine call setline('.', join(reverse(split(getline('.')))))
partial-line (character-wise) selections
As explained down in the "old updates" section, running general commands on a character- or block-wise visual selection — the former being what the OP wants to do here — can be pretty complicated. Ex commands like :substitute will be run on entire lines even if only part of the line is selected using a character-wise visual select (as initiated with an unshifted v).
I realized after the OP commented below that reversing the words in a partial-line character-wise selection can be accomplished fairly easily with
:s/\%V.*\%V./\=join(reverse(split(submatch(0))))/
wherein
\%V within the RE matches some part of the visual selection. Apparently this does not extend after the last character in the selection: leaving out the final . will exclude the last selected character.
\= at the beginning of the replacement indicates that it is to be evaluated as a vimscript expression, with some differences.
submatch(0) returns the entire match. This works a bit like perl's $&, $1, etc., except that it is only available when evaluating the replacement. I think this means that it can only be used in a :substitute command or in a call to substitute()
So if you want to do a substitution on a single-line selection, this will work quite well. You can even pipe the selection through a system command using ...\=system(submatch(0)).
multiple-line character-wise selections
This seems to also work on a multiple-line character-wise selection, but you have to be careful to delete the range (the '<,'> that vim puts at the beginning of a command when coming from visual mode). You want to run the command on just the line where your visual selection starts. You'll also have to use \_.* instead of .* in order to match across newlines.
block-wise selections
For block-wise selections, I don't think there's a reasonably convenient way to manipulate them. I have written a plugin that can be used to make these sorts of edits less painful, by providing a way to run arbitrary Ex commands on any visual selection as though it were the entire buffer contents.
It is available at https://github.com/intuited/visdo. Currently there's no packaging, and it is not yet available on vim.org, but you can just git clone it and copy the contents (minus the README file) into your vimdir.
If you use vim-addon-manager, just clone visdo in your vim-addons directory and you'll subsequently be able to ActivateAddons visdo. I've put in a request to have it added to the VAM addons repository, so at some point you will be able to dispense with the cloning and just do ActivateAddons visdo.
The plugin adds a :VisDo command that is meant to be prefixed to another command (similarly to the way that :tab or :silent work). Running a command with VisDo prepended will cause that command to run on a buffer containing only the current contents of the visual selection. After the command completes, the buffer's contents are pasted into the original buffer's visual selection, and the temp buffer is deleted.
So to complete the OP's goal with VisDo, you would do (with the words to be reversed selected, and with the above-defined ReverseLine command available):
:'<,'>VisDo ReverseLine
old updates
...previous updates follow ... warning: verbose, somewhat obselete, and mostly unnecessary...
The OP's edit makes it more clear that the goal here is to be able to reverse the words contained in a visual selection, and specifically a character-wise visual selection.
This is decidedly not a simple task. The fact that vim does not make this sort of thing easy really confused me when I first started using it. I guess this is because its roots are still very much in the line-oriented editing functionality of ed and its predecessors and descendants. For example, the substitute command :'<,'>s/.../.../ will always work on entire lines even if you are in character-wise or block-wise (ctrlv) visual selection mode.
Vimscript does make it possible to find the column number of any 'mark', including the beginning of the visual selection ('<) and the end of the visual selection ('>). That is, as far as I can tell, the limit of its support. There is no direct way to get the contents of the visual selection, and there is no way to replace the visual selection with something else. Of course, you can do both of those things using normal-mode commands (y and p), but this clobbers registers and is kind of messy. But then you can save the initial registers and then restore them after the paste...
So basically you have to go to sort of extreme lengths to do with parts of lines what can easily done with entire lines. I suspect that the best way to do this is to write a command that copies the visual selection into a new buffer, runs some other command on it, and then replaces the original buffer's visual selection with the results, deleting the temp buffer. This approach should theoretically work for both character-wise and block-wise selections, as well as for the already-supported linewise selections. However, I haven't done that yet.
This 40-line code chunk declares a command ReverseCharwiseVisualWords which can be called from visual mode. It will only work if the character-wise visual selection is entirely on a single line. It works by getting the entire line containing the visual selection (using getline()) running a parameterized transformation function (ReverseWords) on the selected part of it, and pasting the whole partly-transformed line back. In retrospect, I think it's probably worth going the y/p route for anything more featureful.
" Return 1-based column numbers for the start and end of the visual selection.
function! GetVisualCols()
return [getpos("'<")[2], getpos("'>")[2]]
endfunction
" Convert a 0-based string index to an RE atom using 1-based column index
" :help /\%c
function! ColAtom(index)
return '\%' . string(a:index + 1) . 'c'
endfunction
" Replace the substring of a:str from a:start to a:end (inclusive)
" with a:repl
function! StrReplace(str, start, end, repl)
let regexp = ColAtom(a:start) . '.*' . ColAtom(a:end + 1)
return substitute(a:str, regexp, a:repl, '')
endfunction
" Replace the character-wise visual selection
" with the result of running a:Transform on it.
" Only works if the visual selection is on a single line.
function! TransformCharwiseVisual(Transform)
let [startCol, endCol] = GetVisualCols()
" Column numbers are 1-based; string indexes are 0-based
let [startIndex, endIndex] = [startCol - 1, endCol - 1]
let line = getline("'<")
let visualSelection = line[startIndex : endIndex]
let transformed = a:Transform(visualSelection)
let transformed_line = StrReplace(line, startIndex, endIndex, transformed)
call setline("'<", transformed_line)
endfunction
function! ReverseWords(words)
return join(reverse(split(a:words)))
endfunction
" Use -range to allow range to be passed
" as by default for commands initiated from visual mode,
" then ignore it.
command! -range ReverseCharwiseVisualWords
\ call TransformCharwiseVisual(function('ReverseWords'))
update 2
It turns out that doing things with y and p is a lot simpler, so I thought I'd post that too. Caveat: I didn't test this all too thoroughly, so there may be edge cases.
This function replaces TransformCharwiseVisual (and some of its dependencies) in the previous code block. It should theoretically work for block-wise selections too — it's up to the passed Transform function to do appropriate things with line delimiters.
function! TransformYankPasteVisual(Transform)
let original_unnamed = [getreg('"'), getregtype('"')]
try
" Reactivate and yank the current visual selection.
normal gvy
let #" = a:Transform(#")
normal gvp
finally
call call(function('setreg'), ['"'] + original_unnamed)
endtry
endfunction
So then you can just add a second command declaration
command! -range ReverseVisualWords
\ call TransformYankPasteVisual(function('ReverseWords'))
tangentially related gory detail
Note that the utility of a higher-level function like the ones used here is somewhat limited by the fact that there is no (easy or established) way to declare an inline function or block of code in vimscript. This wouldn't be such a limitation if the language weren't meant to be used interactively. You could write a function which substitutes its string argument into a dictionary function declaration and returns the function. However, dictionary functions cannot be called using the normal invocation syntax and have to be passed to call call(dictfunct, args, {}).
note: A more recent update, given above, obsoletes the above code. See the various sections preceding old updates for a cleaner way to do this.
Maybe:
:s/\v(.*) (.*) (.*) (.*)/\4 \3 \2 \1/
Of course you probably need to be more specific in the first part to find that particular sentence. Generally you can refer to match groups as \number with \0 being the whole match.
Here's a way to do by calling out to Ruby. After selecting the line you want to reverse, you can do this in command mode to replace it:
!ruby -e 'puts ARGF.read.strip.split(/\b/).reverse.join'
I found the solution myself thank to your answers and a lot of trying :)
This works:
function! Test()
exe 'normal ' . 'gv"ay'
let r = join(reverse(split(getreg('a'))))
let #a = r
exe 'normal ' . 'gv"ap'
endfunction
Didn't thought that I was enable to write such a function :)