[londonperl] vim question

[David Alban]

so you want to change colons to spaces only from 'b' to the end of the
line on line 2?

if this is the real task, and not a simple generalization of a larger
task, you could use ctrl-v to select the appropriate block and then
the s/// command would work within that block.   note that when a
block is highlighted and you type ':' the following actually shows up
on the "command" line at the bottom of the editing session:

     :'<,'>

don't disturb that.  put your s/// command right after it and it
should operate on the highlighted block.

if the real task(s) is(are) much more complicated, you could probably
use a programming language.  i like perl.

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 5:12 PM,  <asmith9983 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have the following file contents which I'm editing with vim:-
>
>       1  The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
>       2  The:quick:brown:fox:jumped:over:the:lazy:dog.
>       3  The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
>       4  The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
>       5  The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
>
>
>  I want to place my cursor on the b of brown on line 2, and with a simple
>  command change all the colons(:) to end of line,  to a space( ). Obviously its
>  a change to end
>  of line only, so a g substitute modifier is no good. I've also tried selecting
>  selecting to end of line with v, visual mode, then applying ! operator with
>  sed -e 's/:/ /', but it didn't work.
>
>  Anybody got an idea that'll work.

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