182 lines
7.0 KiB
Plaintext
182 lines
7.0 KiB
Plaintext
.Go 4 "REGULAR EXPRESSIONS"
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.PP
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\*E uses regular expressions for searching and substututions.
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A regular expression is a text string in which some characters have
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special meanings.
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This is much more powerful than simple text matching.
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.SH
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Syntax
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.PP
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\*E' regexp package treats the following one- or two-character
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strings (called meta-characters) in special ways:
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.IP "\\\\\\\\(\fIsubexpression\fP\\\\\\\\)" 0.8i
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The \\( and \\) metacharacters are used to delimit subexpressions.
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When the regular expression matches a particular chunk of text,
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\*E will remember which portion of that chunk matched the \fIsubexpression\fP.
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The :s/regexp/newtext/ command makes use of this feature.
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.IP "^" 0.8i
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The ^ metacharacter matches the beginning of a line.
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If, for example, you wanted to find "foo" at the beginning of a line,
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you would use a regular expression such as /^foo/.
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Note that ^ is only a metacharacter if it occurs
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at the beginning of a regular expression;
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anyplace else, it is treated as a normal character.
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.IP "$" 0.8i
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The $ metacharacter matches the end of a line.
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It is only a metacharacter when it occurs at the end of a regular expression;
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elsewhere, it is treated as a normal character.
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For example, the regular expression /$$/ will search for a dollar sign at
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the end of a line.
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.IP "\\\\\\\\<" 0.8i
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The \\< metacharacter matches a zero-length string at the beginning of
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a word.
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A word is considered to be a string of 1 or more letters and digits.
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A word can begin at the beginning of a line
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or after 1 or more non-alphanumeric characters.
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.IP "\\\\\\\\>" 0.8i
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The \\> metacharacter matches a zero-length string at the end of a word.
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A word can end at the end of the line
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or before 1 or more non-alphanumeric characters.
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For example, /\\<end\\>/ would find any instance of the word "end",
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but would ignore any instances of e-n-d inside another word
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such as "calendar".
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.IP "\&." 0.8i
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The . metacharacter matches any single character.
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.IP "[\fIcharacter-list\fP]" 0.8i
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This matches any single character from the \fIcharacter-list\fP.
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Inside the \fIcharacter-list\fP, you can denote a span of characters
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by writing only the first and last characters, with a hyphen between
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them.
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If the \fIcharacter-list\fP is preceded by a ^ character, then the
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list is inverted -- it will match character that \fIisn't\fP mentioned
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in the list.
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For example, /[a-zA-Z]/ matches any letter, and /[^ ]/ matches anything
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other than a blank.
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.IP "\\\\\\\\{\fIn\fP\\\\\\\\}" 0.8i
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This is a closure operator,
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which means that it can only be placed after something that matches a
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single character.
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It controls the number of times that the single-character expression
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should be repeated.
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.IP "" 0.8i
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The \\{\fIn\fP\\} operator, in particular, means that the preceding
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expression should be repeated exactly \fIn\fP times.
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For example, /^-\\{80\\}$/ matches a line of eighty hyphens, and
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/\\<[a-zA-Z]\\{4\\}\\>/ matches any four-letter word.
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.IP "\\\\\\\\{\fIn\fP,\fIm\fP\\\\\\\\}" 0.8i
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This is a closure operator which means that the preceding single-character
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expression should be repeated between \fIn\fP and \fIm\fP times, inclusive.
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If the \fIm\fP is omitted (but the comma is present) then \fIm\fP is
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taken to be inifinity.
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For example, /"[^"]\\{3,5\\}"/ matches any pair of quotes which contains
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three, four, or five non-quote characters.
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.IP "*" 0.8i
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The * metacharacter is a closure operator which means that the preceding
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single-character expression can be repeated zero or more times.
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It is equivelent to \\{0,\\}.
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For example, /.*/ matches a whole line.
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.IP "\\\\\\\\+" 0.8i
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The \\+ metacharacter is a closure operator which means that the preceding
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single-character expression can be repeated one or more times.
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It is equivelent to \\{1,\\}.
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For example, /.\\+/ matches a whole line, but only if the line contains
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at least one character.
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It doesn't match empty lines.
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.IP "\\\\\\\\?" 0.8i
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The \\? metacharacter is a closure operator which indicates that the
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preceding single-character expression is optional -- that is, that it
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can occur 0 or 1 times.
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It is equivelent to \\{0,1\\}.
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For example, /no[ -]\\?one/ matches "no one", "no-one", or "noone".
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.PP
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Anything else is treated as a normal character which must exactly match
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a character from the scanned text.
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The special strings may all be preceded by a backslash to
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force them to be treated normally.
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.SH
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Substitutions
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.PP
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The :s command has at least two arguments: a regular expression,
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and a substitution string.
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The text that matched the regular expression is replaced by text
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which is derived from the substitution string.
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.br
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.ne 15 \" so we don't mess up the table
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.PP
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Most characters in the substitution string are copied into the
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text literally but a few have special meaning:
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.LD
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.ta 0.75i 1.3i
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& Insert a copy of the original text
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~ Insert a copy of the previous replacement text
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\\1 Insert a copy of that portion of the original text which
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matched the first set of \\( \\) parentheses
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\\2-\\9 Do the same for the second (etc.) pair of \\( \\)
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\\U Convert all chars of any later & or \\# to uppercase
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\\L Convert all chars of any later & or \\# to lowercase
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\\E End the effect of \\U or \\L
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\\u Convert the first char of the next & or \\# to uppercase
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\\l Convert the first char of the next & or \\# to lowercase
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.TA
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.DE
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.PP
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These may be preceded by a backslash to force them to be treated normally.
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If "nomagic" mode is in effect,
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then & and ~ will be treated normally,
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and you must write them as \\& and \\~ for them to have special meaning.
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.SH
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Options
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.PP
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\*E has two options which affect the way regular expressions are used.
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These options may be examined or set via the :set command.
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.PP
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The first option is called "[no]magic".
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This is a boolean option, and it is "magic" (TRUE) by default.
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While in magic mode, all of the meta-characters behave as described above.
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In nomagic mode, only ^ and $ retain their special meaning.
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.PP
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The second option is called "[no]ignorecase".
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This is a boolean option, and it is "noignorecase" (FALSE) by default.
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While in ignorecase mode, the searching mechanism will not distinguish between
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an uppercase letter and its lowercase form.
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In noignorecase mode, uppercase and lowercase are treated as being different.
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.PP
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Also, the "[no]wrapscan" option affects searches.
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.SH
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Examples
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.PP
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This example changes every occurence of "utilize" to "use":
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.sp
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.ti +1i
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:%s/utilize/use/g
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.PP
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This example deletes all whitespace that occurs at the end of a line anywhere
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in the file.
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(The brackets contain a single space and a single tab.):
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.sp
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.ti +1i
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:%s/[ ]\\+$//
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.PP
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This example converts the current line to uppercase:
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.sp
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.ti +1i
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:s/.*/\\U&/
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.PP
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This example underlines each letter in the current line,
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by changing it into an "underscore backspace letter" sequence.
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(The ^H is entered as "control-V backspace".):
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.sp
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.ti +1i
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:s/[a-zA-Z]/_^H&/g
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.PP
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This example locates the last colon in a line,
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and swaps the text before the colon with the text after the colon.
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The first \\( \\) pair is used to delimit the stuff before the colon,
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and the second pair delimit the stuff after.
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In the substitution text, \\1 and \\2 are given in reverse order
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to perform the swap:
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.sp
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.ti +1i
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:s/\\(.*\\):\\(.*\\)/\\2:\\1/
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