use Perl

• VIM DWIM (Score:1)

  by gtod (2306)

  Interesting you should say that. It must be the way my brain works (or doesn't work) but I've always struggled with Vim's Regex requirments.

  Being reasonably competent in Perl 5 Regex syntax (thanks to Friedl's MRE) I just get annoyed at the differences I find in Vim and drop out and end up doing things in Perl.

  I suppose I should read the Vim docs but I'm almost afraid that my brain just can't hold two Regex flavours at once without stopping all together...
  • Re:VIM DWIM (Score:2)

    by rafael (2125)

    If you've read MRE, you know that there aren't two Regex Flavours. There are many more : I know at least the grep and the egrep/sed/awk ones.

    There used to be a project (before vim 6 was out IIRC) to bring Perl 5-compatible regexps to vim (i.e. to write a translator Perl 5-style to vim-style.) It was dropped, but you can still write a patch and attempt to convince Bram Moolenaar (who isn't a Perl-addict like us...)
    • Re:VIM DWIM (Score:1)

      by broquaint (2964)

      There used to be a project (before vim 6 was out IIRC) to bring Perl 5-compatible regexps to vim (i.e. to write a translator Perl 5-style to vim-style.)

      In the mean time you can just use the likes of :perl and :perldo (see. :help perl for more info).

      --
      

      broquaint out