Replacing text based on whats in the current search register is a quite handy tool that I use often. I believe I picked this tip up from Nick Janetakis, check out his YouTube channel for some amazing vim tips.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP_ckZ30gbs
If there is one thing that I Like most about vim it’s the ability to hack on it and make it work well for you.
Replacing text in vim ¶ #
Vim can often be a bit verbose, but that’s ok because we can hack on it, and
make our own shortcuts and keybindings. For instance, finding and replacing
text requires using a command at the vim command-line :. Replacing foo with
bar looks like this :%s/foo/bar/g, the final g means all of the foos, not just
the first one on the line.
making it better ¶ #
I have a keybinding in my init.vim that will allow me to search for a pattern
with the usual / character, page through them as normal with n and N, but
when I press <C-R> it will populate the replace command for me so that all I
need to do is type out the new text.
nnoremap <c-r> :%s/<C-R>///g<Left><Left>
Note on the <C-R>/ ¶ #
In command mode : vim allows you to paste any text from any register into the
current command. The <C-R>/ will paste the text from the current search
register into the command.
<C-R> in command mode can paste text from any register, you can see what
registers are in use with the :reg command. There are a lot of them and many
get populated automatically as you yank text or create macros.
Also see how to use
to save macros to key bindings easily