I have a file which content like this:
id phone name
x'1234' 12345 jack
x'4567' 45678 Jojo
x'7890' 89456 Dio
x'4591' 34872 joseph
and i want to parse it into like this:
id phone name
1 12345 jack
2 45678 Jojo
3 89456 Dio
4 34872 joseph
I know basic regular expression could replace all id to any string like this:
:%s/x'\(\w\+\)'/1/g
and it will become:
id phone name
1 12345 jack
1 45678 Jojo
1 89456 Dio
1 34872 joseph
How to replace id to an increment variable ?
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Mind that you can use an expression as the replacement string in the substitute command (:s). When the replacement string starts with \= it is evaluated as an expression.
Here, one possible solution is
:let i=1 | g/^x'\d\+'/s//\=i/ | let i=i+1
It finds all occurrences (one per line) of the ^x'\d\+' pattern and replaces it with the value if i that is incremented each time the match is found. As has been noted in comments, the | is a part of the g replacing "code", as "| is used to execute more than one command at a time".
Another solution is using the line() command (taking into account that your file has a header top line, so you should actually subtract 1 from the value returned with line()):
%s/^x'\d\+'/\=line('.')-1/
The ^x'\d\+' regex matches
^- start of a linex'-x'string\d\+- 1+ digits'- a'char.
There are other interesting "increment number in regex" examples at the Using an expression in substitute command page:
- Number all the lines in a file (insert line number followed by a tab):
:%s/^/\=line('.')."\t"/- Number a range of lines (from line 10 to line 20):
:10,20s/^/\=line('.')."\t"/- Number a range of lines sequentially starting from 1:
:let counter=0|10,20g//let counter=counter+1|s/^/\=counter."\t"- Number all the paragraphs in range starting from 1 (assuming the paragraphs are separated by one or more blank lines):
:let counter=0|1,20g/^$\n^\s*[^\s]/let counter=counter+1|+1s/^/\=counter."\t"Note: The above command does not work for the first paragraph in the file if there is no blank line above it.
