Use argdo with search pattern to delete line while suppressing errors and requiring confirmation in Vim

vim

I use gVim 7.3.46 on Win 7.

It is pretty straightforward to use argdo to search args files for a pattern and replace it while suppressing errors and requiring confirmation.

:argdo %s/pattern/replace/gec | update

However, I would like to delete entire lines that contain the pattern. I use the following.

:argdo %/pattern/d | update

But I can't suppress errors or require confirmation. Is there a way to do this? Thanks!

(Also, is there a way to set "more" off? Thanks!)

Best Answer

You can suppress some errors by preceding the command with :silent. To delete lines containing a pattern, the command is :g/pattern/d. So the following should do what you want.

:silent argdo g/pattern/d | update

See

:help :silent
:help :g

To turn "more" off,

:set nomore

Also see

:help 'more'
:help more-prompt
:help messages

How to deal with confirmations depends on what needs to be confirmed. Putting a ! after a command often means, "Do it anyway."

Related Solutions

In Vim how to delete all words and characters not matching a pattern

:%s/\v(.*)(bwrb.*471,\d)(.*)/\2

does what you want with your sample. It will probably need to be altered if your real world needs are more complex.

Basically, the pattern matches the whole line but we use grouping to separate what we want from what we don't. We get three groups, "before what we want", "what we want", "after what we want" and we replace the whole line with the second group, noted \1.

Step by step:

%s/

The substitution is done on the whole file.
\v

The "very magic" flag is useful for limiting the number of backslashes and improve legibility.
(.*)

The first group contains any number of any character. Anchoring to the start of the line is implied so it matches whatever is before what you want. It would be \(.*\) without the "very magic" flag.
(bwrb.*471,\d)

This is the second group: your pattern. The only thing I changed is [0-9] which I replaced with the equivalent but shorter \d.
(.*)

The third group contains any number of any character up to the end of the line.
/\2

The replacement part consist only in the second group.

Delete / Yank lines from current line up to and including line containing search pattern

With an Ex command:

:,/\\e/d

Breakdown:

Structure of an Ex command: :{range}command{address}.
One can use line numbers, marks or search patterns to delimit the range, here we start with the current line, usually a . but it can be skipped like here, and we finish with a pattern matching \end.
We delete the lines in that range.

With a combination of search and contextual marks:

/\\e<CR>
d''

Breakdown:

Search for \e.
delete from here to the line of the previous cursor position.

With visual mode:

v/\\e<CR>
V
d

Breakdown:

Visually select from here to \e.
Switch to visual line block.
delete the lines in the selection.

Variation of the method above with an Ex command instead of a normal mode command:

v/\\e<CR>
:'<,'>d

Breakdown:

Visually select from here to \e.
Enter command-line mode with :, the '<,'> range is inserted automatically.
delete the lines in the selection.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

In Vim how to delete all words and characters not matching a pattern

Delete / Yank lines from current line up to and including line containing search pattern

Related Question