Vim copy and paste

Question

My previous question seems to be a bit ambiguous, I will rephrase it:

I have a file like this:

copythis abc
replacethis1 xyz
qwerty replacethis2
hasfshd replacethis3 fslfs
And so on...

NOTE: replacethis1, replacethis2, replacethis3, ... could be any words

How do I replace "replacethis1","replacethis2","replacethis3",.. word by "copythis" word by using minimum vim commands.

One way I can do is by these steps:

1. delete "replacethis1","replacethis2","replacethis3",.. by using 'dw'
2. copy "copythis" using 'yw'
3. move cursor to where "replacethis1" was and do 'p'; move cursor to where "replacethis2" was and do 'p' and so on...

Is there a better way to do this in VIM (using less number of vim commands)?

Answer 1

Since you changed your question, I'd do it this way:

Move to the first "replacethis1" and type cw (change word), then type "copythis" manually.

Move to the next "replacethis", hit . (repeat last operation)

Move to the next "replacethis", hit .,

and so on, and so on.

If "copythis" is a small word, I think this is the best solution.

Answer 2

The digit needs to be included, and there could be more than one instance per line:

:%s/replacethis\d/copythis/g