Question

When answering Remove EOL spaces of selection only if there are, I noticed that my answer is not really satisfying: the pattern \ \+$ has to be typed twice:

• once for searching with :g
• once for replacing with :s

First thought was to simply use g/\(\ \+$\)/s/\1//g but this gives me an error about an invalid back reference (E65).

Is there a way to re-use the pattern used in :g for the [cmd] being executed?

Answer 1

You don’t need \1:

:g/ \+$/s///g

---

:g/pat/s//PAT/g

is same as:

:%s/pat/PAT/g