How to go back to previous when doing find replace confirm in vi?

Question

Frequently when I am doing a find and replace in vi I will do it like this:

:%s/find/replace/gc

This gives you the option to skip by pressing n, or replace by pressing y. But, sometimes I will accidentally skip over one in a large file by pressing n when I meant to press y.

How do I go backwards to the previous one and give me a second change?

Essentially, how to I find (search) the other direction temporarily? thanks.

Answer 1

I'm not sure if you would like to interrupt current find-replace operation and resume it again. But if that is acceptable, here is my suggestion:

1. Start your find-replace the way you mentioned: :%s/find/replace/gc
2. After you accidentally skip over a substitution by pressing n, interrupt the search by pressing <ctrl-C>
3. Press <shift-N> to go back to the previous occurrence of your find term
4. Run find-replace a little differently while you are at this word: :.,$s/find/replace/gc
5. Continue the operation

All this functionality works with vim native capabilities without having to install any addon.

Note: The .,$ range specifier indicates to perform :s (substitute) operation over a range of lines that start with current line (indicated by .) and until last line (indicated by $).

Note2: It might be known to you, but reiterating for anyone else who stumbles upon this post searching for something similar - The % range specifier indicates to perform :s (substitute) operation over all lines of currently active buffer.