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Whenever you use a grep regular expression at the command prompt, surround it with quotes, or escape metacharacters (such as & ! . * $ ? and \ ) with a backslash ( \ ). finds any line in the file list starting with "b." displays any line in list where "b" is the only character on the line.
A non-quoted backslash, \, is used as an escape character in Bash. It preserves the literal value of the next character that follows, with the exception of newline.
Bash escape character is defined by non-quoted backslash (\). It preserves the literal value of the character followed by this symbol. Normally, $ symbol is used in bash to represent any defined variable.
In a Bash script, when we quote a string, we set it apart and protect its literal meaning. Certain programs and utilities reinterpret or expand special characters in a quoted string. An important use of quoting is protecting a command-line parameter from the shell, but still letting the calling program expand it.
surround.vim is going to be your easiest answer. If you are truly set against using it, here are some examples for what you can do. Not necessarily the most efficient, but that's why surround.vim was written.
ciw'Ctrl+r"'
ciw - Delete the word the cursor is on, and end up in insert mode.' - add the first quote.Ctrl+r" - Insert the contents of the " register, aka the last yank/delete.' - add the closing quote.
di'hPl2x
di' - Delete the word enclosed by single quotes.hP - Move the cursor left one place (on top of the opening quote) and put the just deleted text before the quote.l - Move the cursor right one place (on top of the opening quote).2x - Delete the two quotes.
va':s/\%V'\%V/"/g
va' - Visually select the quoted word and the quotes.:s/ - Start a replacement.\%V'\%V - Only match single quotes that are within the visually selected region./"/g - Replace them all with double quotes.Quote a word, using single quotes
ciw'Ctrl+r"'
It was easier for me to do it this way
ciw '' Esc P
Here's some mapping that could help:
:nnoremap <Leader>q" ciw""<Esc>P
:nnoremap <Leader>q' ciw''<Esc>P
:nnoremap <Leader>qd daW"=substitute(@@,"'\\\|\"","","g")<CR>P
If you haven't changed the mapleader variable, then activate the mapping with \q" \q' or \qd. They add double quote around the word under the cursor, single quote around the word under the cursor, delete any quotes around the word under the cursor respectively.
The macro ways !
press q and q for recording into q register (we use "q" as shortcut to remember "quotes").
press shift + b move cursor to front of current word
press i type ' (a single quotes)
press esc then press e to move to end of word
press a then press ' again to surround the word with quotes.
press esc to get into normal mode.
finally press q to record it into q register.
How to use
You can alter step 4 with anything you like {a line, a word until found some character, etc}.
Make recorded macro persistent
let @q='ctrl + r ctrl + r q'
save and quit
open your files, go to some words
now press @q
if you do it correctly, magic things should appear in your words.
You can apply this to other macros you loved.
In addition to the other commands, this will enclose all words in a line in double quotes (as per your comment)
:s/\(\S\+\)/"\1"/
or if you want to reduce the number of backslashes, you can put a \v (very-magic) modifier at the start of the pattern
:s/\v(\S+)/"\1"/
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