I'm looking for search and replace expressed on columns instead of rows.
Something like:
:15,$s/foo/bar/gc
where 15 is the first column to consider and $ (in this case) is the
last column (whose value will change from row to row).
Well, you can do something like
:%s/\%>15cfoo/bar/g
which, as you describe, works to the end of the line, or, if you
want to specify a right-hand column, you can use
:%s/\%>15cfoo\%<30c/bar/g
will substitute "foo" with "bar" only between columns 15 and 30
(adjust for the off-by-one that may or not may occur)
You can read more at
:help /\%c
where you'll learn about the zero-width atom that allows you to
specify the column information in a regexp.
Additionally, there's the "world-famous Dr. Chip's VisVim plugin"
which allow you to select visual blocks and do substitution on
them too. :)
-tim
