2019-05-07



Why does vi not support replacing the nth occurance of the search
pattern on the line like ed does?

In ed this replaces the fourth space with an underscore:

     s, ,_,4

In vi (actually in ex!) you would  have  to  use  something  like
this:

     s, [^ ]*3 ,1_,

... which only works if the search pattern is a single character.
It would be easier to switch temporarily to ed in cases you would
like to perform this task multiple times in vi (... or  record  a
macro).


See also:  [0]


[0]  https://debianforum.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=173199


http://marmaro.de/lue/        markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de>