Question

  <created>
    [e-mail] 
  </created>

I want to replace the above with but the username may vary i.e,[e-mail] ,[e-mail]…

      <created>
       [e-mail]
     </created>

What is the command to replace this in vim

       %s/<created>\r*\r</created>/new string

Answer 1

It depends on the formatting that you want, but for the specific example that you quote, you could do one of these:

Really simple, without context: replace [e-mail] with [e-mail]

:%s/pat@c\.com/[e-mail]/g

With context

:%s:<created>\s*\n\s*\zs.\{-}\ze@c\.com\s*\n\s*</created>:tom

By way of explanation:

:%s:XXX:YYY - Substitute XXX with YYY over the whole file (using colons as delimiters to avoid having to escape slashes or @s with a backslash)

where XXX is:
<created> - literal text to search for
\s*       - soak up any spaces or tabs to the end of the line
\n        - a new line character
\s*       - soak up any spaces or tabs at the start of the line
\zs       - special code that says "the match starts here", so only the bit between this and the \ze are actually replaced
.\{-}     - catch any characters, as few as possible - this will match 'pat' in the example above
\ze       - end of the bit we're changing
@c        - literal text - the @ and the start of the domain name
\.        - '.' means any character, so to match a literal dot, you must escape it
com       - literal text - the end of the email address
\s*       - any spaces/tabs to the end of the line
\n        - a new line character
\s*       - any spaces/tabs
</created> - literal match on the terminator (works because we don't use '/' as the delimiters)

and YYY is just the literal string "tom" to insert

An alternative formation:

:%s:<created>\_s*\zs\S\+\ze\_s*</created>:[e-mail]

:%s:XXX:YYY: - as before

where XXX is:

<created>  - literal text to search for
\_s*       - search for zero or more white-space characters, including new-lines (hence the underscore)
\zs        - as before, this is the start of the bit we want to replace (so we're not changing the <created> bit)
\S\+       - one or more non-whitespace characters (\+ is one or more, * is zero or more) - this should catch the whole email address
\ze        - as before, the end of the match
\_s*       - zero or more white-space characters
</created> - the end delimiter

YYY is then the whole email address.

I hope that gives you some helpful information. There are lots of useful reference guides on regular expressions (which is what these are) on the web (although note that Vim uses a slightly different format to most: \+ instead of + etc). I’d strongly recommend reading:

:help pattern.txt

But bear in mind there’s a lot in there, so read it gradually and experiment. You can also start by using a simple search (press /) and thinking about doing a substitution later, e.g. type:

/<created>\_s*\zs\S\+\ze\_s*<\/created>

Note that I’ve prefixed the / with a backslash as the search start is /. A clever trick with this is that :s by default uses the last search, so you can type the line above (/<created>\_s*\zs\S\+\ze\_s*<\/created>) and tweak it until it’s right, then just do :%s::[e-mail] and since the bit marked XXX above is absent, it’ll use your last search and just work!

If there are any bits above you don’t understand, :help is your friend. For example, to find out about \zs, type:

:help \zs

For information about \_s, type:

:help \_s

For general information about :s type:

:help :s

etc…