Re: search and replace using a list of characters to replace

Greetings,
Just trying to learn

On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 3:24 PM, Tim Chase <vim@tim.thechases.com> wrote:
> On 11/03/12 14:11, Chris Lott wrote:
>> I have a large text file in which I need to remove all punctuation,
>> all special characters ("smart quotes") and the like, and a bunch of
>> selected words.
>>
>> Can this be done within Vim?
>
> Yes.
>
> Oh, you want to know *how*? :-P
>
> The smart-quotes are the hardest ones to do, but if you can enter
> them in vim (or select+yank them, and then paste them into an Ex
> command using control+R followed by a double-quote), they should be
> usable:
>
> :%s/\([[:punct:]]\+\|"\|"\|selected\|words\)//g
>
> Alternatively, you might want to specify what *is* allowed and
> invert it:
>
> :%s/\W\+//g " that's "everything that isn't a Word character"
> or
> :%s/[^[:alnum:][:space]]\+//g "all but alnum & spaces"
>
> which you can read about at
>
> :help :alnum:
> :help /\W
> :help /\|
>

Asking because I don't know and I don't use smart quotes. What makes
them so difficult to remove in a s/search/replace/g ?

Aren't they just quotation marks?

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