In vim I want to find a string and insert spaces in between each character of the string

Question

I have been trying to search and replace with regex and capture groups in a simple way, but have no idea how.

Let's say I want to operate on the previous sentence capturing "trying" and replacing with "t r y i n g".

:%s/\vtrying{-}/ \1/g

Answer 1

You have a solution, but here is a different one:

 %s/trying/\=join(split(submatch(0),'\zs'), ' ')/g

That should be a little bit faster than the substitute() call, not that this matters much.

Answer 2

Just do two substitute matches. Where the second one uses the substitute with an expression (\= at the beginning of the replacement :h sub-replace-expression)

:%s/trying/\=substitute(submatch(0), '\w\zs\ze\w', ' ', 'g')/

The expression just inserts a space between every word character.