How does one escape backslashes and forward slashes in VIM find/search?
RegexVimRegex Problem Overview
For instance, if I wanted to a find and replace with strings containing backward or forward slashes, how would this be accomplished in vim? Thank you!
Examples
Find & Replace is: :%s/foo/bar/g
what if I wanted to find all occurrences of <dog/> and replace it with <cat\>
Regex Solutions
Solution 1 - Regex
Same way you escape characters most anywhere else in linuxy programs, with a backslash:
:%s/<dog\/>/<cat\\>
But note that you can select a different delimiter instead:
:%s@<doc/>@<cat\\>@
This saves you all typing all those time-consuming, confusing backslashes in patterns with a ton of slashes.
From the documentation:
>Instead of the / which surrounds the pattern and replacement string, you
can use any other single-byte character, but not an alphanumeric character,
\, " or |. This is useful if you want to include a / in the search
pattern or replacement string.
Solution 2 - Regex
%s:<dog/>:<cat>
You can replace the / delimiters if they become annoying for certain patterns.
Solution 3 - Regex
Quote them with a backslash. Also, it often helps to use another delimiter besides slash.
:%s#<dog/>#<cat\\>#
or if you have to use slash as the substitute command delimiter
:%s/<dog\/>/<cat\\>/
Solution 4 - Regex
I was looking for something similar, to search for register values containing the / character (to record a macro). The solution was to search using the ? token instead of the /.
Solution 5 - Regex
The syntax is:
:%s/<dog\/>/<cat\\>/g
Solution 6 - Regex
backslash slash backslash star
/(<- the prompt)\/\*
so after you type it looks like
/\/\*