Adding Line Break After pattern in VIM

Question

I have a css file and I want to add an empty line after every }.

How can I do this in Vim?

Solution 1

A substitution would work nicely.

:%s/}/\0\r/g

Replace } with the whole match \0 and a new line character \r.
or

:%s/}/&\r/g

Where & also is an alternative for the whole match, looks a bit funny though in my opinion. Vim golfers like it because it saves them a keystroke :)

\0 or & in the replacement part of the substitution acts as a special character. During the substitution the whole string that was matched replaces the \0 or the & character in the substitution.

We can demonstrate this with a more complex search and replace -

Which witch is which?

Apply a substitution -

:s/[wW][ih][ti]ch/The \0/g

Gives -

The Which The witch is The which?

Solution 2

The answer is :%s/}/}\r/ I guess.

Solution 3

:%s/pre/cur\r/g

%: operate on the entire buffer.

pre(previous pattern): which pattern will be to changed.

cur(current pattern): by which the previous pattern will be changed.

\r: new line.

g: repeat for every match on a line (default is to just replace the first).

Comments

[jdhao]

Related to unix.stackexchange.com/questions/247329/…

[Ingo Karkat]

For such a beginner question, an explanation would surely help: \0 (shorter would be &) re-inserts the match, \r is the escape sequence for a newline (in a replacement, usually it's \n).