Re: Visual selection via :global

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. ;-)

> 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






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