Re: Visual selection via :global

On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 05:57:51PM -0500, Tim Chase wrote:
> On 2020-07-24 03:48, Manas wrote:
> > Hi folks, I have a markdown file containing a couple of headings and
> > some pointers as shown below.
> >
> > ```
> > # Heading 1
> > - pointer 1
> > - pointer 2
> > - pointer 3
> >
> > ## Heading 2
> > - pointer 4
> > - pointer 5
> > ```
> >
> > I wanted to visual select all pointers only. So what I did was
> > `:g/^-/normal V` but it only selects the last pointer (i.e. pointer
> > 5). Shouldn't it select all pointers?
>
> Vim doesn't (to the best of my knowledge without hacky plugins)
> support disjoint selections. That said, you don't mention what you
> want to *do* with those lines once you've selected them. Change
> their case? Indent them? Only do a :substitute command on
> list-items and not headings? I presume you don't just want the lines
> visually-selected for aesthetic reasons. ;-)
>
I want to yank those lines in order to paste somewhere else. In this
particular case, I wanted to send it to someone.

> > Is this normal behaviour? And what am I missing here?
>
> Yes, it is the normal/expected behavior, so you're not missing
> anything. :-)
>
> > Also according to `:h :normal` while writing `:normal {commands}`,
> >
> > {commands} cannot start with a space. Put a count of
> > 1 (one) before it, "1 " is one space.
> >
> > I did not quite get the meaning out of it. Can someone help me?
>
> Though mostly orthogonal to your previous text, this means that when
> vim is parsing the "normal" command
>
> :normal ~
> ^
> and
>
> :normal ~
> ^^^^^
>
> are both the same thing, that the normal-command(s)-to-be-executed
> don't start until after the leading whitespace. Thus if you really
> do want the first character of your "normal" command to be a space,
> you have to do
>
> :normal 1 ~
> :normal 1 ~
>
> Alternatively, I prefer to execute the expression-register as a macro
> instead:
>
> @=' ~'
>
> which is similar. That said, I'm not sure it has much to do with
> your previous issues.
>
> -tim
>
Really thanks for your explanations and suggestion.

--
Manas
CSAM Undergraduate | 2022
IIIT-Delhi, India

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