Another way to go would be to wreck the buffer. Check the destruction video (start around 1:50) – Destruction.

If you wipe out all of the stuff you don’t need, and then append the ‘,’ and ‘:’ to the ends of the lines, then just join everything up. Again, toss that in a macro or a function, make the call and you’re done.

But, yes, each document is consistently formated and conducive to capturing the information through regexes – that’s the upside. Here’s a visual:

This is category A, Section 10:
…maybe 200 lines of stuff I don’t need….

Company 1 Info
Company 1 People
Company 1 Projects
…maybe 100 lines of stuff I don’t need…

Company 2 Info
Company 2 People
Company 2 Projects
…maybe 100 lines of stuff I don’t need…

Company 3 Info
Company 3 People
Company 3 Projects
…maybe 100 lines of stuff I don’t need…

Company 4 Info
Company 4 People
Company 4 Projects
…maybe 100 lines of stuff I don’t need…

This is category B, Section 11:
…repeating (categorically) again 4 more times…

All of the lines are very consistent and easy to find via regular expressions. The problem is that I need to build an end result of:

CatA,Sec10,Company1:People1:Projects1
CatA,Sec10,Company2:People2:Projects2
CatA,Sec10,Company3:People3:Projects3
CatA,Sec10,Company4:People4:Projects4
CatB,Sec11,Company5:People5:Projects5 <–and so on

This means I need to collect the Category and Section from the main category heading (easy) and then apply that to the sub-categories below it. I can easily capture the category information and I can easily capture the sub-category information – due to the consistency of the format and naming conventions. And, I can easily reformat the captured data and output it to a new file that will be good for uploading it to where I want it. I am (intellectually) failing at tying the two search/captures together in order to keep their association.

Thank for the quick response, Derek. :)

I’m having a tough time visualizing the problem. Can you post something to http://gist.github.com so I can see it?

If the text is structured (as you seem to indicate) this may be a candidate for a macro or a function, depending on whether this is a “one off” or something you want to do more often.

One thing I can suggest is to try and “:copy” the data to the end of the file as you accumulate what you want and then work with it from there. It might be easier to deal with when you’ve put it into a known location with a known format.

But, if you post to gist then I’ll be able to think about it much easier.

A 4,000 line document with 4 “categories” (say, 1,000 lines of a main category). Within each of these sections there are 5 more repeating bits of information (say, sub-category information). I need to save the individual sub-category information and append to each of them some information obtained from it’s parent category.

So, I can :g/find-a-main-category-line-using-regexps/s/collect-submatch-info/\=save-that-info-by-calling-a-function

My intellectual struggle is on how to drop down through the next ~1000 lines within that category to pickup the desired sub-category information. I see only two options, but I think I am missing the best one:

1). I can extend the original regexp (that finds the main category info) and make it discover the lower sub-category information all at once – then bulk save them together. This would mean a seriously long regexp, which is fine if that’s the best method.

2). I can collect each main category into a register, then act upon that register by passing it back into a another substitute/submatch query. Under this approach I would probably need to repeat that method again in order to separate the lower sub-categories from each other.

What I “feel” that I SHOULD be able to do is search for the main categories (as described above) and then – once found – continue down (like a sub-search) into the sub-category information, until it finishes collecting the information before proceeding to and through the next main category. I can only get the query that finds the main categories to run through all of the main categories (and not “stopping” to gather the sub-category information – essentially losing my ability to discover the sub-category information IN RELATION to the main category in which it resides.

Yikes, sorry for the verbosity. Any “guidance” or “direction” would be much appreciated.

I really learned a lot from this!
Thanks!

I now have a few years experience with Vim but I see all your videos because you’re funny ^^

I’m no more a beginner but your video “Globals, Commands and Functions” impress me! Thank you for your great work!

It seems that the pipe | much work like on the command line. I wasn’t sure about the scope of the substitution.

>Now… go read the help :)
Got me. Didn’t tried to hard. The help is really monumental ^^.

Thanks and really great work. I’ve learned alot!