Question

I often do some operations on set of string and generally I it works well with a regex in Notepad++. A long time ago I remember using some tool which could record an action and perform same operation. For example lets say I have this string . Please keep in mind this is just an example.

First Name,Last Name,Social Security 

I want to convert it to the following:

first_name("First Name"),last_name("Last Name"),social_security("Social Security")

Is there any way to do this using some text editor? I have these type of requirements too often. I remember using vim for something similar.

Answer 1

It can be accomplished using vim macros, but a “simple” substitution fits better

:s/\(^\|,\)\(\S\+\) \(\S\+\)\(,\|$\)/\l\2_\l\3("\2 \3")/g

Or you can use awk (sed, whatever) for this from within vim, like:

:%!awk 'BEGIN {FS=","} { print whatever you modified your columns }'

With macro, something like qayt,Pi("ESCf,i")ESCF2SPACEr_l~0~q

But this only partially works… (for the first column) Basically:

1. qa records macro into a register
2. yt, (assuming we are on the first char in the line, this yanks till the first ,
3. P puts the yanked test right before the actual cursor position (that is the first char on the line)
4. (cursor position maintained) i("ESC inserts (", then leaves insert mode
5. f,i")ESC finds the next space and insert ") before
6. F2SPACEr_ finds the second space backwards, and replaces with _
7. l~0~q moves to next char then change its case to lower, then moves to first char of line, and change that’s case as well, then finally exit recording macro.

Then run your macro from normal mode via @a.

Vim is very capable.