Is it possible to interactively delete matching search pattern in Vim

Question

There is a phrase that I want to look for in Vim  When found  I want to delete that occurrence of the phrase  What is the easiest way to cycle through all the occurrences   via  n   and delete a match one by one  I do not want to delete all of them at once   Note  I know I can delete a certain number of characters or a number of words  but I want to specifically remove the match of my search  Is this possible

User · Answer

1   In my opinion  the most convenient way is to search for one occurrence first  and then invoke the following  substitute command    s   gc  Since the pattern is empty  this  substitute command will look for the occurrences of the last-used search pattern  and will then replace them with the empty string  each time asking for user confirmation  realizing exactly the desired behavior  2   If it is a common pattern in one   s editing habits  one can further define a couple of text-object selection mappings to operate specifically on the match of the last search pattern under the cursor  The following two mappings can be used in both Visual and Operator-pending modes to select the text of the preceding match of the last search pattern  vnoremap  lt silent gt  i    lt c-u gt call SelectMatch   lt cr gt  onoremap  lt silent gt  i   call SelectMatch   lt cr gt  function  SelectMatch       if search      bcW           norm  v         call search      ceW       else         norm  gv     endif endfunction  Using these mappings one can delete the match under the cursor with di   or apply any other operator or visually select it with vi

User · Answer

The best way is probably to use     s phrase  gc   c asks for confirmation before each deletion  g allows multiple replacements to occur on the same line   You can also just search using  phrase  select the next match with gn  and delete it with d

User · Answer

There are 3 ways I can think of   The way that is easiest to explain is     s phrase to delete  gc   but you can also  personally I use this second one more often  do a regular search for the phrase to delete   phrase to delete   Vim will take you to the beginning of the next occurrence of the phrase   Go into insert mode  hit i  and use the Delete key to remove the phrase   Hit escape when you have deleted all of the phrase   Now that you have done this one time  you can hit n to go to the next occurrence of the phrase and then hit the dot period     key to perform the delete action you just performed  Continue hitting n and dot until you are done   Lastly you can do a search for the phrase to delete  like in second method  but this time  instead of going into insert mode  you   Count the number of characters you want to delete  Type that number in  with number keys   Hit the x key - characters should get deleted  Continue through with n and dot like in the second method   PS - And if you didn t know already you can do a capital n to move backwards through the search matches

User · Answer

http   vim wikia com wiki Search and replace Try this search and replace    s foo bar gc  Change each  foo  to  bar   but ask for confirmation first  Press y or n to change or keep your text

[vim] Is it possible to interactively delete matching search pattern in Vim?

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