Hello,
On 10/29/06, Mike Blonder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Hi.
>>
>> I want to reorder variable2 and variable3 from the following line
>> structure for 44 lines in a datafile, the data field separator is a
>> "((" character
>>
>> variable1 data((variable2 data((variable3 data((variable4 data
>> ((variable5 data((variable6 data((variable7 data((variable8 data
>> ((variable9 data(( .. (( (end of line. some lines have upwards to 20
>> or more variables)
>>
>> to
>>
>> variable1 data((variable3 data((variable2 data(( etc
>>
>> when I use the following syntax (which I extrapolated from sec 12.2
>> of VIM manual, version 6.3):
>>
>> 6,50s;\(variable2.*\)((;\(variable3.*\);\2\1;
>>
>
> Try using the following command:
>
> :6,50s;\(variable2.\{-}\)((\(variable3.\{-}\)((;\2((\1((
>
Thanks, it works perfectly.
Can you explain: why you changed .* to . and the function of
{-}
'*' is greedy and matches as many characters as possible.
\{-} is non-greedy and matches as few characters as possible.
For example, take the following single-line of text:
The quick brown fox jumped over the fence. The quick brown fox jumped
over the fence.
If you use the following substitute command on the above text:
:s/The.*fox/The dog/g
The line will be changed to the following:
The dog jumped over the fence.
OTOH, if you use the following command:
:s/The.\{-}fox/The dog/g
The line will be changed to:
The dog jumped over the fence. The dog jumped over the fence.
- Yegappan
>
>>
>> "variable3 data" is correctly moved into the position formerly held
>> by "variable2 data". However, "variable2 data" is appended to the
>> end of the entire line and NOT moved to the position that was
>> formerly taken by "variable3 data"
>>
>> Any ideas as to what's wrong?
>>
