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I'm looking for a way to replace all dots in a line except the last one.
Example:
Blah - whatever - foo.bar.baz.avi should becomeBlah - whatever - foo bar bar.avi
Since I'll have more than one line in the file and the amount of dots varies in each line I'm looking for a generic solution and not something like "Replace the first X matches" with X being a constant.
353
In normal mode, type cgn (change the next search hit) then immediately type the replacement. Press Esc to finish. From normal mode, search for the next occurrence that you want to replace ( n ) and press . to repeat the last change.
Press y to replace the match or l to replace the match and quit. Press n to skip the match and q or Esc to quit substitution. The a option substitutes the match and all remaining occurrences of the match. To scroll the screen down, use CTRL+Y , and to scroll up, use CTRL+E .
The % is a shortcut that tells vi to search all lines of the file for search_string and change it to replacement_string . The global ( g ) flag at the end of the command tells vi to continue searching for other occurrences of search_string . To confirm each replacement, add the confirm ( c ) flag after the global flag.
This seems to do the trick:
%s/\.\(.*\.\)\@=/ /g
\@= is a lookahead. It only matches a full stop if there are any following full stops.
See :help zero-width.
83
As a variation on the first answer you may prefer this syntax:
%s/\.\ze.*\./ /g
It let's you put the assertion that there be a following full stop after the search operator.
24
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