Question

I have a file containing string like this one :

print  $hash_xml->{'div'}{'div'}{'div'}[1]...

I want to replace {'div'}{'div'}{'div'}[1] by something else.

So I tried

%s/{'div'}{'div'}{'div'}[1]/by something else/gc

The strings were not found. I though I had to escape the {,},[ and ]

Still string not found.

So I tried to search a single { and it found them.
Then I tried to search {'div'}{'div'}{'div'} and it found it again.
Then {'div'}{'div'}{'div'}[1 was still found.

To find {'div'}{'div'}{'div'}[1]

I had to use %s/{'div'}{'div'}{'div'}[1\]

Why ?

vim 7.3 on Linux

Answer 1

That’s because the [ and ] characters are used to build the search pattern.

See :h pattern and use the help file pattern.txt to try the following experiment:

• Searching for the “[9-0]” pattern (without quotes) using /[0-9] will match every digit from 0 to 9 individually (see :h \[)

• Now, if you try /\[0-9] or /[0-9\] you will match the whole pattern: a zero, an hyphen and a nine inside square brackets. That’s because when you escape one of [ or ] the operator [*] ceases to exist.

Using your search pattern, /{'div'}{'div'}{'div'}[1\] and /{'div'}{'div'}{'div'}\[1] should match the same pattern which is the one you want, while /{'div'}{'div'}{'div'}[1] matches the string {'div'}{'div'}{'div'}1.