Re: Insert non-rectangular selection

:r! reply-body --top '/tmp/Re1BDLjSqOg3'
On Tue, 25 May 2021, Andre Tann <atann@alphasrv.net> wrote:
> I repeatedly have the following situation, and wonder how it can be
> handled better than I do it now. These lines must be merged
>
> /path;text
> /path;text
> /path;text
>
> with these:
>
> /subdir
> /longsubdir
> /longlongsubdir
>
> Result:
>
> /path/subdir;text
> /path/longsubdir;text
> /path/longlongsubdir;text
>
>
> What I do now is to mark and yank the second block, go to the first
> semicolon, and press P. Result is:
>
> /path/subdir ;text
> /path/longsubdir ;text
> /path/longlongsubdir;text
>
> But this is obviously not what I want. How can I avoid the extra blanks?

This is an interesting problem. I've personally found visual-block
yank / put most useful in ASCII art, where true rectangular blocks are a
feature. I see some tantalizing hints in the visual.txt help file about
padded with whitespace or not, but I can't get that to work for this
type of change.

Faced with a problem like this, I'd probably write a program to do the
change (possibly within the editor :'a,'e ! perl -wne '...' -- or
possibly as a separate true script), but I might also find a way to
do it with marks and macros. Maybe something like this tail-recursive
thing:

:map ## maf;'b"aDddmb`a"aPj0##

Set up mark b at the start of the /subdir area, move to the start of
the /path;text area and start

f; find the ;, hopefully will error out at end
ma set mark a
'b jump to mark b (start of line)
"pD delete to end of line, stored in p
dd delete now blank line
mb set a new mark b
`a return to mark a (mid line, on ; )
"pP put buffer p
j0 move to start of next line
## recurse

(Untested.)

Elijah

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