I am using Vim to read through a lot of C and Perl code containing many single letter variable names.
It would be nice to have some command to change the name of a variable to something more meaningful while I’m in the process of reading the code, so that I could read the rest of it faster.
Is there some command in Vim which could let me do this quickly?
I don’t think regexes would work because:
the same single letter name might have different purposes in different scoping blocks; and
the same combination of letters could be part of another longer variable name, a string literal, or a comment.
Are there any known solutions?
The following is how to rename a variable which is defined in the current scope {}
.
Move your cursor to the variable usage. Press gd
. Which means - move cursor to the definition.
Now Press [{
- this will bring you to the scope begin.
Press V
- will turn on Visual Line selection.
Press %
- will jump to the opposite }
thus will select the whole scope.
Press :s/
- start of the substitute command.
<C-R>/
- will insert pattern that match variable name (that name you were on before pressing gd
).
/newname/gc<CR>
- will initiate search and replace with confirmation on every match.
Now you have to record a macros or even better - map a key.
Here are the final mappings:
" For local replace
nnoremap gr gd[{V%::s/<C-R>///gc<left><left><left>
" For global replace
nnoremap gR gD:%s/<C-R>///gc<left><left><left>
Put this to your .vimrc
or just execute.
After this pressing gr
on the local variable will bring you to :s
command where you simply should enter new_variable_name
and press Enter.