Question

I’d like to try out different regexes for the formatlistpat option. Any suggestions as to the easiest way to do this?

I know in Insert mode I can use <Ctrl+r> to paste in a register. And that I can use this do edit macros. Is there an equivalent for options? Or something even simpler?

The other idea I had was just sourcing a buffer with the set command in it. But I’m unsure of the way to put an option value into buffer so it can be edited.

Any thoughts? Tips? Suggestions?

Answer 1

When you are editing command-line you have two options here:

1. Use autocomplete:

   set formatlistpat=<Tab>
   

   (not really tab, but rather whatever ‘wildchar’/’wildcharm’ is set to). This will populate command-line with current option value, properly escaped. I cannot suggest this way for this particular option because double escaping looks ugly and there are lots of escapes in most patterns.

2. Use expression register (works both in command-line and in insert mode):

   let &formatlistpat=<C-r>=string(&formatlistpat)<CR>
   

   Note that in this case escaping is not done automatically. Using :let and string() is easier then do proper escaping for :set.