Find and Replace Text in 1 or More Files Using Vim, fzf and ripgrep
In this video we'll cover a bunch of different find / replace use cases ranging from simple word searches to regular expressions.
Quick Jump:
Vim is a great editor and over the months I’ve configured a number of custom mappings and plugins to help me find and replace text in a number of different ways.
In this video, we’ll go over how to set things up so you can:
- Find and jump to a word in a line
- Find and cycle through word matches in the current file
- Find and cycle through visual selection matches in the current file
- Find and cycle through regular expression matches in the current file
- Find any word, visual selection or regexp match in the current directory
- Replace a word, visual selection or regexp match in the current visual selection
- Replace a word, visual selection or regexp match in the current file
- Perform a multiple cursors style replace, but without using multiple cursors
- Replace a word, visual selection or regexp match in the current directory
Basically we’ll cover close to every possible find / replace use case you’ll encounter while doing some programming work or writing. Everything will be accessible with easy to remember mappings or short commands and searching will be lightning fast.
# Demo Video Showing Everything
Timestamped Table of Contents
- 0:55 – Cloning an example project to work with
- 1:43 – Finding or jumping to a word on a single line
- 3:25 – Finding a term in the current file
- 4:57 – Automatically clearing search highlights on cursor move
- 6:37 – Manually replacing text in the current file
- 7:33 – Using the star mapping to search a word under your cursor
- 7:54 – Replacing the last searched word using a custom mapping
- 10:45 – Using the visual star plugin to search for any selected term
- 11:59 – Replacing any selected term using a custom mapping
- 13:31 – Replacing text inside of a visual selection
- 14:48 – A multiple cursors alternative in Vim
- 18:28 – Custom key mapping to quickly replace near by text
- 19:53 – Finding terms in multiple files based on where you opened Vim
- 21:33 – Opening search results in vsplits, splits or tabs
- 22:42 – Opening multiple search results at once
- 23:22 – Seeing real time search results when finding text in multiple files
- 24:02 – Filtering multiple file search results by file type
- 24:48 – Finding files, viewing git commits and more with the fzf.vim plugin
- 26:50 – Installing and configuring fzf
- 28:26 – Installing and configuring fzf.vim
- 30:26 – Installing and configuring ripgrep to work with fzf and fzf.vim
- 32:41 – Finding and replacing text in multiple files with vim-grepper
- 35:42 – Finding and replacing a phrase or regexp in multiple files
- 39:15 – Installing and configuring the vim-grepper plugin
- 40:48 – Running vim-grepper manually for more complex find / replace
Reference Links
- https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles
- https://github.com/haya14busa/is.vim
- https://github.com/nelstrom/vim-visual-star-search
- https://github.com/junegunn/fzf
- https://github.com/junegunn/fzf.vim
- https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
- https://github.com/mhinz/vim-grepper
What do you do to solve finding and replacing text? Let me know below!