Question

How do you replace inside a replace?

I know you can get the current word under the cursor into the replace, but I want to perform a replace on it before having it as the output.

For example:

• Having a document that has passed through the clbuttic filter and replacing words that you know have been affected for the worse, such as deinstitutionalization (Hint: Consbreastution of the United States of America). The file also has some words that are properly replaced.
• Changing o to 0 in Wooloomooloo (and only for that word) throughout a document

A real world example (from my vim history) is being in a Latex document and running

%s/\\begin{table}\[h\]/\\begin{table}\[H\]/c

where I am duplicating the string just to get a minor change.

Answer 1

Replacing o to 0 is straightforward:

:s/o/0/g

Perhaps you want to know how to apply it to a (visual) selection?

:s/\%Vo/0/g

Edit Likely what you want (see comments)

:%s/\<\zs[Wolm]\+\>\ze/\=substitute(submatch(0), 'o', '0', 'g')/g

What this does:

• [Wolm]\+ matches sequences consisting of just W,o,l,m
• \<[Wolm]\+\> matches (independent) words of the same (so, Wooloomooloo, or mooW, Wlomo would all match, but not amool etc).
• \zs marks the begin of the match for replace, \ze the end
• \=substitute(submatch(0), 'o', '0', 'g') replaces the match (between \zs and \ze) but subsituting 0 for o

You can start from this pattern

• replacing [Wolm]\+ with your actual target
• adding optional context outside \zs...\ze so you can reduce matches
• adding \c in the front of the pattern to enable case-insensitive matching