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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-11T21:25:19+00:00

I was just wondering if anyone could help out with how to do the

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I was just wondering if anyone could help out with how to do the following using vi.

I have a text file and it might contain something like

start of text file:
--something1.something2--
--anotherThing1.something2--
end of text file:

If I want to take this line and convert it by way of searching for anything matching the first occurrence of [A-Za-z0-9] copy that to the buffer then append it on the same line to before the first occurrent of —

start of text file:
--something1.something2.something1--
--anotherThing1.something2.anotherThing1--
end of text file:

Is there a single VI command to do this?

Cheers
Ben

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team
    :%s/--\([a-zA-Z0-9]*\).\(.*\)--/--\1.\2.\1--/gc

    or without asking confirmation for every replace:

    :%s/--\([a-zA-Z0-9]*\).\(.*\)--/--\1.\2.\1--/g

    will produce:

    --something1.something2.something1--
--anotherThing1.something2.anotherThing1--

    from:

    --something1.something2--
--anotherThing1.something2--

    This is if you want to copy the first word after ‘–‘ up to first ‘.’ and append ‘.’ and word found before the last ‘–‘.

    Using vim.

    RE COMMENTS:

    Someone mentioned that it will not work when there are multiple words and so on.
    I tested it on the following:

    start of text file:
--something1.something2.something3.something4.something5.something6--
--anotherThing1.something2.anotherThing3.anotherThing4.anotherThing5--
end of text file:

    after replace with the above expression:

    start of text file:
--something1.something2.something3.something4.something5.something6.something1--
--anotherThing1.something2.anotherThing3.anotherThing4.anotherThing5.anotherThing1--
end of text file:
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