vi substitute

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

My question is how would I substitute for ceratain number of occurences in a line? If this is my input

rjohns BFSTDBS01 Standard Silver NPRO30DINCR  2 Client

Is it possible to change the first 3 occurences of space " " to a comma?

2 
:s/ /,/3

or by awk:

echo "rjohns BFSTDBS01 Standard Silver NPRO30DINCR 2 Client" |awk '{for (i=1;i<=3;i++) sub(/ /,",")}1'
3

I thought something like:

:,$s/ /,/3

But that replaces the third space on every line with a comma using vim. So you would have to do:

:,$s/ /,/1

three time instead.

Or using sed:

sed -e 's/ /,/' -e 's/ /,/' -e 's/ /,/'

Subststiutes the first space on the next three lines for me using vim. :confused:

4 
sed 's/ /,/;s/ /,/;s/ /,/' file

Oops already posted above..

5

May be instead of executing it 3 times., Use the following.,

:s/ /,/gc

While it asks for confirmation, give yes only to the first three.

In vim substitution, the range specifier is for number of lines, and not for the number of occurrences.

:1,3s/ /,/

The above is for first to third line.

And the count is for.

From help :s

An optional number that may precede the command to multiply or iterate the command.

@TonyFullerMalv: So thats why it replaces first space on next three lines.

6

One more way for substitution in vim.

if you don't know the line numbers.

select the line in escape mode using " Shift + v " or "Ctrl+v".

Then press Colan ":" and execute the substitution command in command mode.

see the example:

:'<,'>s/ /,/g

It will substitute the space into comma, only selected lines.

7

Using sed:

sed -e 's/\([^ ]*\) \([^ ]*\) \([^ ]*\)\(.*\)/\1,\2,\3,\4/g' filename

cheers,
Devaraj Takhellambam

8

Using the grouping we can achieve it ,

Try the following,

:s/\([^ ]*\) \([^ ]*\) \([^ ]*\) /\1,\2,\3,/

Thanks