Can I use perl regular expressions in the vim command line?

I want to use perl regular expressions on the vim command line. For example, to capitalize the words on the current line, you could type:

:s/(\w+)/\u$1/g

user51549

Posted 2010-10-06T17:17:46.683

Reputation: 381

From :help perl-patterns ... Vim's regexes are most similar to Perl's, in terms of what you can do. The difference between them is mostly just notation uhhmm ... that's like saying Chinese is similar to Greek, in terms of what you can communicate. The difference is mostly just notation. regex is nothing but notation! The differences are annoying if one notation is less familiar than another. That's why people ask about perl in the first place! – dreftymac – 2019-09-07T14:23:16.007

Answers

You can filter any line or range of lines through an external command in vim, using !. E.g., you can do:

:.!perl -pe "s/(\w+)/\u\1/g"

which will filter the current line through that perl command. ( Here : to get into command line mode, and the . which follows mean the current line; you can also specify a line range or % for the whole file, etc.)

If you want to use vim's built in substitution patterns, the closest you'll come is to use vim's "very magic" option, \v, like so:

:s/\v(\w+)/\u\1/g

see :help pattern and :help substitute for more details. I don't think "very magic" is quite identical to perl's patterns, but is very close. Anyway, you can always use perl itself if you're more comfortable with it, as above.

frabjous

Posted 2010-10-06T17:17:46.683

Reputation: 9 044

1also, with very magic, you don't have to memorize that ( is treated specially while { is not: "all ASCII characters except '0'-'9', 'a'-'z', 'A'-'Z' and '_' have a special meaning." thanks! – Ayrat – 2018-03-27T08:20:57.583

No, you can't use Perl regular expressions in that way. For help in learning the Vim equivalents for Perl regular expression components, see

:help perl-patterns

However, you can use Perl as an external filter as explained by frabjous. You can also execute Perl commands within Vim using the Perl interface, if your Vim was compiled with the +perl feature. See

:help if_perl.txt

garyjohn

Posted 2010-10-06T17:17:46.683

Reputation: 29 085

2+1, :help perl-patterns has resolved the one thing that I previously hated about vim – Mark K Cowan – 2014-08-26T16:57:13.433

You can also use:

/\v"your regex"

instead of:

/"your regex"

Kevin

Posted 2010-10-06T17:17:46.683

Reputation: 81

This is the answer I was looking for! – alextercete – 2016-12-06T14:28:40.673

1You can also help yourself out by adding nnoremap / /\v and vnoremap / /\v to your .vimrc so that when you type / it just works. – mattmc3 – 2019-08-16T20:29:12.117

Here's a solution from http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Perl_compatible_regular_expressions

:perldo s/(\w+)/\u$1/g

(Verify with :ver that +perl or +perl/dyn is compiled in.)

Bernhard Wagner

Posted 2010-10-06T17:17:46.683

Reputation: 140

Use the eregex.vim plugin. It's very useful and I have had no problems with it.

DBedrenko

Posted 2010-10-06T17:17:46.683

Reputation: 167