Select all matching text in Vim?

Question

I have a bunch of data, and I want to yank everything that matches the following regex to a register :

/'user': '[a-Z]*'

Is there any way to copy all the matches to a register in vanilla vim? I've looked at this question, but it only works for one result, after pressing 'n' to go to the next result, it will use '//e' again and go to the end of the next result, instead of the beginning.

I've also looked at this SO question. It's almost exactly what I'm looking for, except I can't figure out how to change it to work with particular matches instead of the lines they are on.

Solution 1

This can be simply achieved, by running a :s command with the n flag set (which basically says, to not replace anything (but by using an \= in the replace part, you can still capture the matches (see :h sub-replace-special). So first let's clear register A:

qaq

Then you can capture your maches into register a by using:

:%s/'user': '[a-Z]*'/\=setreg('A', submatch(0), 'V')/gn

And paste your matches:

:put A

This needs at least Vim 7.4 (I forgot the actual patch number).

Solution 2

" clear the 'a' register

qaq

" global search and yank all lines ('A') into the 'a' register.

:g/'user': '[a-Z]*'/y A

Modify the part between :g/ and /y A as needed.

" paste into another file

"aP

Comments

[evilsoup]

Is there ever more than one match per line?

[Marcus Buffett]

Yes, multiple matches per line

[evilsoup]

This puts each match on its own line, which is useful behavior most of the time. Being a single ex-mode command, it'll also be faster than my macro for really large files. +1.

[Christian Brabandt]

Well, you can of course capture it in a list and then later do whatever you want with that. That was just an example since the OP did want to capture it in a register.

[Marcus Buffett]

The data is all on one line

[broomdodger]

There should be one line per line found. If there are multiple instances of the found string per line, then both will be listed in the same output line.

[Marcus Buffett]

I mean, the text, all the data, is just one line, wouldnt this just yank that one line?

[broomdodger]

Yes, I did not know your data was one long line.

[hhh]

Does this plugin really works? A lot of errors with the command %YankMatches /re.sub([^)]*)/

[Ingo Karkat]

@hhh: You also need to install my ingo-library plugin. It's listed as a DEPENDENCY in the plugin's INSTALLATION section.

[TankorSmash]

I think this needs to be changed to [a-zA-Z], at least on vim 8.1, otherwise vim says something about reverse character in range.

[Christian Brabandt]

@TankorSmash this might depend on the locale