Question

I’m trying to append “/index.html” to some folder paths in a list like this:

path/one/
/another/index.html
other/file/index.html
path/number/two
this/is/the/third/path/
path/five
sixth/path/goes/here/

Obviously the text only needs to be added where it does not exist yet. I could achieve some good results with (vim command):

:%s/^\([^.]*\)$/\1\/index.html/

The only problem is that after running this command, some lines like the 1st, 5th and 7th in the previous example end up with duplicated slashes. That’s easy to solve too, all I have to do is search for duplicates and replace with a single slashes.

But the question is:
Isn’t there a better way to achieve the correct result at once?

I’m a Vim beginner, and not a regex master also. Any tips are really appreciated!

Thanks!

Answer 1

So very close 🙂

Just add an optional slash to the end of the regex:

\/\?

Then you need to change the rest of the pattern to a non-greedy match so that it ignores a trailing slash. The syntax for a non-greedy match in vim (replacing the *) is:

\{-}

So we end up with:

:%s/^\([^\.]\{-}\)\/\?$/\1\/index.html/

(Doesn’t hurt to be safe and escape the period.)