Nikolaos A. Patsopoulos wrote:
Hi,
I'm trying to delete several lines from the beginning of file till the
appearance of a specific pattern, without deleting the pattern. I have
used the following command:
:1,/Citations: /d/e-10
but the offset doesn't work.
Thanks in advance,
Nikos
Well, I suppose
gg/Citations: /
would put the cursor on the first occurrence of the pattern from the
start of the file (assuming that it isn't at the very start of the file,
in which case there's nothing to do).
(a) if the pattern is at the start of a line:
:1,.-1d
(b) otherwise
hdgg
will delete everything preceding it to the start of the file.
Breakup of the commands:
: ex-command
1, from first line
.-1 to current line minus 1
d delete lines (the :d[elete] command)
h left one character
dgg delete to start of file.
( d{motion} is a Normal-mode command
and gg moves to start of file )
That's for doing it manually, on one file, at the command-line. Now
let's assume you wanted to do it on all *.txt files in the current
directory and everywhere below it. You could then first source the
following scriptlet:
function DeletePreamble(pattern)
" search from and including start-of-file
normal gg
let matchline = search(a:pattern, 'c')
" if not found, there's nothing to do
if matchline == 0
return
endif
" pattern was found in line(matchline)
" the cursor is now on the first char of the match
if col('.') == 1
" match found in column 1
if matchline == 1
" match at start of file: nothing to do
return
else
" delete all preceding lines (linewise)
1,.-1d
endif
else
" match not at start of line
" delete from preceding character
" to start of file (characterwise)
normal hdgg
endif
endfunction
and then call it as:
:args ./**/*.txt
:argdo call DeletePreamble('Citations: ') | update
Best regards,
Tony.
