The search command in vim allows you to place the cursor relative to the search results. For example, /hello/b+2 places the cursor on the first l.
How do I do that with the substitute command?
s/hello/b+2/_/
does not work.
I need this to replace not the entire search string, but a portion of it only (specifically, to blank out all but the first character of a word).
You generally have two options: similar to other regex engines zero-width matches (though with different syntax):
or vim-specific “set the start of the match here”:
. Also, there is a workaround which will look similar in almost every other regex engine:
: this captures text that should be unchanged and makes replacement include it.