use Perl

• VIM DWIM (Score:1)

  by gtod (2306) on 2003.01.16 6:06 (#16076)

  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...

  Reply to This

  • 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