I got an ezmlm warning, so I'm resending.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Eric Arnold <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: May 7, 2006 10:21 PM
Subject: Re: Newbie problem: Beginners script pitfall
To: Meino Christian Cramer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: vim@vim.org
On 5/7/06, Meino Christian Cramer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: Gerald Lai <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Newbie problem: Beginners script pitfall
Date: Sun, 7 May 2006 12:08:46 -0700 (PDT)
Hi,
thanks a lot for the help!
I got the script running...nearly.
In my opinion the help system of vim cann't help a newbie to find the
things and answers s/he is looking for.
I have to disagree. Vim's help docs are as complete as any I have
seen. I suspect your problem is that you are starting from the
bottom/middle up, which is fine only when you have a bigger picture in
mind.
Often the problem is just the "context" I have to feed into the
system to get help. What context ???
The 'context' is the 'bigger picture'. No matter what you're trying
to learn, if you haven't read enough to know what you're
looking/searching for, then frustration is inevitable.
Starting with :help ,a page or so down, you will see:
|usr_41.txt| Write a Vim script
There are obscure things in Vim that can be hard to find, as with any
system, but you haven't hit them yet, and by the time you do, you
should be experienced enough to find most all of them.
Example:
help script
gives me an "Introduction"
help scripts
shows me, how to debug scripts and
helpgrep scripts
clist
gives me 229 matches.
Have you tried :h normal^D or :h s/^D or :h script^D ?
As newbie...one is lost. A program of the complexity and power of vim
deserves something more than grep. What's about an extra user_* file,
That's why Vim help has keywords/tags and hyperlinks.
which shows contexts (what the plural of context?) of certain topics
and will combine tags in a contextual manner? As for my last
question: How would a newbie guess correctly, that failing with "set
history=100" has something to do with "set nocompatible", without
knowing that in beforehand ?
The more pain you are feeling the more it should spur you to start
from the top and work your way into the docs, i.e. simply
:help
If you follow the table of contents, it will guide you through all
sorts of stuff, including the problems with the [no]compatible option.
Unfortunately, with some things like "nocp", there are just too many
things to cross-reference with every possible thing, so :help set
won't tell you.
However, if you did :help history^D and picked the history option,
i.e. 'history', then the help for this would have cross-referenced you
to 'compatible'.
The awful truth is that almost every time I felt lost when I was
starting with Vim, it was my fault for not having the patience to
start at the top level.
As for :helpgrep you got a lot of matches for a common word like
'scripts'. That's expected no matter what the raw text search is.
Try 'scripts' on Google :) However, using the command line
completion ^D and <TAB>, will show you *keywords*, where the returned
list is manageable.
But this is another story.
My current problem is:
The script combines two consecutive lines of text, which consist of
different contents. The second line will be deleted after the
contents of both are processed.
I want to run the script over an input of different length. The first
line has to be skipped (it is the famous "#!/bin/zsh" :O).
My problem here is, that the script does not stop corrrectly. As it
modifies the length of the text while running, my attempts to pass
a range to the script or to determine the range by the script
itsself, which would be the better solotion, failed.
In Emacs, there is the possibility to stop a looping macro/script
automagically when it tries to access something beyond EOF.
looping past EOF in Vim script should never be a problem if you're
checking for line("$").
You can also put an error handler around something with
try
...
catch
...
endtry
I found a hint for the abort() command, but
help abort
said, that
This function causes abnormal program termination.
despite the fact, that
help function
states:
When the [abort] argument is added, the function will
abort as soon as an error is detected.
. By the way: <C-]> on [abort] gives me
"E426: tag not found [abort]
.
How can I solve this problem?
You should include the script or script fragments if it is huge. It
sounds like you aren't using relative range addresses, i.e 2,$
or .,$ or /#!\/bin\/zsh/+1,$ . Also within the script you can
use your own loops:
let linenr = 2
while linenr < line("$")
let contents = getline(linenr)
if ...whatever...
let contents = substitute(...
call setline(linenr, contents)
endif
...
let linenr += 1
...
Thank you very much for any help in advance!
mcc
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