Vim Find And Replace

The short answer

In Vim, to search and replace the first occurrence of a string on the current line (i.e. the line the cursor is on), you can use the substitute command (:s) as follows:

:s/<pattern>/<replacement>

Where:

• pattern is the string you want to replace.
• replacement is the string you want to replace the pattern with.

For example, this command will replace the first occurrence of the string "foo" with the string "bar":

:s/foo/bar

You can also read our other article on how to search for patterns in Vim.

Replacing all the occurrences of a pattern

To replace all the occurrences of a pattern on the current line, you can append the g flag to the substitute command as follows:

:s/<pattern>/<replacement>/g

Replacing all the occurrences of a pattern in the entire file

To replace all the occurrences of a pattern in the entire file, you can prepend the substitute command with a percentage sign (%) as follows:

:%s/<patter>/<replacement>

Replacing the occurrences of multiple patterns

To find and replace the occurrences of multiple patterns at once, you can use the following command:

:[%]s/<pattern>[\|<pattern>...]/<replacement>/[g]

Where:

• <pattern>\| <pattern>...] is a list of patterns separated by \|.

For example, this command will replace all the occurrences of the strings "email" and "login" with the string "credentials" in the entire file:

:%s/email\|login/credentials

Making the substitute command case insensitive

To replace the occurrences of a pattern regardless of its case, you can append the i flag to the substitute command as follows:

:[%]s/<pattern>/<replacement>/[g]i

Replacing the occurrences of special characters

Replacing tabs with spaces

Using the pattern matching approach above, we can use vim substitute to replace tabs with spaces:

:[%]s/\t/ /[g]

Replacing double quotes with single quotes

Similarly, to replace double quotes with single quotes on the entire file, developers can run this command:

:[%]s/"/'/[g]

Limiting the pattern substitution to specific lines

In Vim, there are several ways to limit the substitution of patterns to a specific number of lines.

Substituting between a line range

To replace a pattern between specific lines, you can use the substitute command as follows:

:<start>,<end>s/<pattern>/<replacement>/g

Where start and end are the line numbers the substitution should happen between.

For example, this command applies the substitution between the lines 2 and 7:

:2,7s/hello/world

Easily retrieve this syntax using Warp's Agent Mode:

If you’re using Warp as your terminal, you can easily retrieve this syntax using the Warp Agent Mode feature:

‍

EnteringWhat is the Vim command to substitute a pattern in a line range? in the Agent Mode question input will prompt a human-readable step by step guide including code snippets.

Substituting N lines from the current line

To replace a pattern starting from the current line to a specific line number, you can use the substitute command as follows:

:.,+<lines>s/<pattern>/<replacement>/g

Where:

• . represents the current line.
• lines represents the amount of lines.

For example, this command applies the substitution from the current line on to the next 7 lines:

:.,+7s/hello/world

Substituting from the current line to the end of the file

To replace a pattern starting from the current line to the end of the file, you can use the substitute command as follows:

:.,$s/<pattern>/<replacement>/g

For example, this command applies the substitution from the current line to the end of the file:

:.,$s/hello/world

Substituting in a visual block selection

To replace a pattern with a visual block selection, you can use the substitute command as follows:

:'<,'>s/<pattern>/<replacement>/g

Where:

• '< represents the start of the visual block.
• '> represents the end of the visual block.

Deleting the occurrences of a pattern

To delete all the occurrences of a pattern, you can leave the replacement string blank as follows:

:[%]s/<pattern>//[g]