Searching for a certain word and modifying them within Sublime Text 2 and Vim

Question

I am trying learn the keybindings of vim one by one. I thing that I thought I should get good at early is to find a string of text and replace them with something else.

I had successfully done this on E-TextEditor on Windows where I will key in v/something/\rsomethingelse

for the desired effect.

but I find that isn't the case in the commmand mode in SublimeText 2. What happens in ST2 is that once I am in command mode, I press v which puts the editor in visual mode, then if I key in /, it enters search, then I key in the word "something", if I press "/", it will be part of the search query instead of ending the regexp, okay, I thought, then i press return to see if an instance of something gets selected, but it doesn't, nor does esc or any other key I can think of. Note that the instances of "something" do get found but just not selected for further operations.

Does this feature not exist in SublimeText2 or am I missing something?

Answer 1

Nik, either you learn Vim or you learn Sublime Text 2.

ST2's vintage mode is at best a good approximation of Vim's most basic features within the constraints of Sublime Text.

For example, it doesn't have the same command line and thus doesn't provide Vim's awesome search/replace feature.

For that you must use ST2's own search/replace mechanism accessible by typing Ctrl+h.

When you type / in "command mode" you have the search bar showing at the bottom of the window. Since it's ST2's own search bar (also accessible via Ctrl+f) it doesn't work at all like the replace bar. Much less like Vim's command line.

The list of vintage mode/vim similarities is a thousands time shorter than the list of their differences so I suggest you pause and think about what you actually want to do:

a) learn how to use Sublime Text 2 which is a very fine text editor

or

b) learn how to use Vim which is one of the two best text editors out there (how diplomatic I am).

If you choose a) you don't need to activate the vintage mode at all since most of its features are 1/1 mappings to ST2's own features. Stop looking at Vim articles, instead invest your time in learning how ST2 works and how to make the best out of it.

If you choose b) the first step must be to do the vim tutorial accessible via Terminal.app: type vimtutor and follow along. Once you have done vimtutor (maybe a couple of times) you can download a recent build of MacVim and start applying your newfound knowledge.

Not making this choice won't lead you anywhere because most of what you will find about Vim won't work in ST2 and what works there is a tiny little fraction of what makes Vim so amazing.

In the end, your choice is irrelevant. What counts is that you make it and focus.

Answer 2

Nik, although I'm certain your intentions are best, I must say I agree (for the most part) with @romaini on this.

Vim and Sublime Text 2 (ST2) are, although trying to be similar (well, one trying more than the other) two different editors. I have not used ST2 much, but Vim I've used quite a bit, and it excels at this kind of thing, so it is well worth learning. It could take some, yes, but as time goes along and you learn "new tricks" things start to be "logical" more and more.

Vim's "power" comes from several things; mappings, operator/movement combinations and regular expressions.

For example, if we take your string:

print('AwfullyWide')
print('NotReally')

You're at the beginning of the first line, and you wish to replace the content within the apostrophes. By typing ci' which stands for change inside apostrophe (change is the operator, inside ' is the movement (text) upon which the operator will be executed, you will get print('') after which you can replace the text inside.

Vim's way of working in this manner is best thought of if you ask yourself "What do I wish to accomplish with some particular piece of text?". Then it starts making sense.

Of course, if you wish to do so in one go :%s/AwfullyWide/NotReally a simple substitution will accomplish the same result. Of course, regexes have much more potential than this simple substitution.