Question

I am using VIM to clean up a data source, and format it properly for use with SIMILE Timeline.

VIM works great, but as far as I know it can’t be automated, so I was thinking of using something like SED to clean up the datasource. I know SED can be used to do search and replace, but when I use VIM to clean the data up, I use a combination of VIM macros and vim regex search and replace.

Is there any equivalent to VIM macros in SED?

Answer 1

For very simple text processing (i.e. using Vim like an enhanced ‘sed’ or ‘awk’, maybe just benefitting from the enhanced regular expressions in a :substitute command), use Ex-mode.

REM Windows
call vim -N -u NONE -n -es -S "commands.ex" "filespec"

Note: silent batch mode -s-ex messes up the Windows console, so you may have
to do a cls to clean up after the Vim run.

# Unix
vim -T dumb --noplugin -n -es -S "commands.ex" "filespec"

Attention: Vim will hang waiting for input if the “commands.ex” file doesn’t
exist; better check beforehand for its existence! Alternatively, Vim can read
the commands from stdin. You can also fill a new buffer with text read from
stdin, and read commands from stderr if you use the – argument.

For more advanced processing involving multiple windows, and real automation
of Vim (where you might interact with the user or leave Vim running to let the
user take over), use:

vim -N -u NONE -n -c "set nomore" -S "commands.vim" "filespec"

Here’s a summary of the used arguments:

-T dumb           Avoids errors in case the terminal detection goes wrong.
-N -u NONE        Do not load vimrc and plugins, alternatively:
--noplugin        Do not load plugins.
-n                No swapfile.
-es               Ex mode + silent batch mode -s-ex
                  Attention: Must be given in that order!
-S ...            Source script.
-c 'set nomore'   Suppress the more-prompt when the screen is filled
                  with messages or output to avoid blocking.