Re: vi, search string and comment line howto?

Did my reply not come through on the 26th?

In short, the pipe can be used to string together *ex* commands,
not normal-mode commands. Even then only certain ex commands can
be separated by the pipe as detailed at

:help :bar

I've pasted my original reply below in case it didn't come
through for you on the first pass.

-tim

>> Hello, I can't figure out the syntax to search
>> for a certain string and then comment out that
>> line. I know you can have multiple commands on
>> a single line, but I can't figure it out. As
>> an example I have a "file" with the following
>> contents:
>>
>> line 1 and stuff
>> line 2 contains my_string
>> line 2 and stuff
>>
>> Now I want to vi the "file" and comment out the line
containing "my_string"
>> by running the following commands:
>> vi file #to start editing "file"
>> /my_string #to search for the line I want to
comment, containing
>> "my_string"
>> I# #to append a comment (#) to the
beginning of the
>> current line
>> :wq #to write and quit
>>
>> I should be able to string all the above
>> commands together separated by a
>> pipe:
>> vi -c "/my_string | I# | :wq" file

You're passing command-line (Ex) commands to vim, not normal-mode
commands, so you can do this using ex commands instead:

vi -c "/my_string/s/^/#/" -c "wq" file.txt

Or, if you want to comment all instances of it:

vi -c "g/my_string/s/^/#/" -c "wq" file.txt

or even just do it in sed:

sed -iBAK '/my_string/s/^/#/' file.txt

-tim

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