Re: sorting/randomizing text blocks separated by empty lines

If you can write a regex that matches the first lines, I've posted a "somewhat brutish" method for doing the sort in the past:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/vim_use/sort$20John$20Little/vim_use/EHULejNIHz4/p9Dh6IILRtMJ

(If your chunks are long, tread carefully with :set ul=-1).

It's a variation on the decorate-sort-undecorate method. If your first lines aren't distinctive other than being preceded by an empty line, I found I had to do two decorate steps, and other fiddling:

:normal ggO " start file with blank line, so that the first
" first line has a blank line before it
:g/\(^\n\)\@<=./s/$/xyzzy " mark first lines
:v/xyzzy/s/$/plugh/ " mark the others
:1dd " delete the added line
:g/plugh/-j! " join non-first lines to the one before it
:sort
:%s/plughplugh/\r/g " split lines again
:%s/plugh/\r/g
:%s/xyzzy/\r/g

To sort the chunks randomly, you'd have to decorate the lines with a random number. If you're on something Gnu-ish, piping through shuf would do; replace the :sort with

:%!shuf

Regards, John Little

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