Case preserving substitute in Vim

Question

Can this can be done in Vim?

What I mean is: searching for 'BadJob' and replacing with 'GoodJob' would do the following replacements

'badjob' -> 'goodjob'  
'BadJob' -> 'GoodJob'  
'badJob' -> 'goodJob'  
'BADJOB' -> 'GOODJOB'

Answer 1

Use abolish.vim:

:%S/badjob/goodjob/g

Answer 2

I don't know if this is the kind of solution you're looking for... but i've used this: keepcase.vim

There's no support otherwise in vim...

Answer 3

sure u can

:s/\cbad/\= strpart(submatch(0), 0 ,1) == toupper(strpart(submatch(0), 0, 1)) ? "GOOD" : "good"/

ps. i'm guessing keepcase.vim encapsulates some similar logic :)

Answer 4

For most (non-complex) cases, i recommend @rampion’s answer over mine.
If you got a minute, my post might be still be worthwhile, though. Level up your awareness for scripting gotchas.

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You can just paste and adapt this:
_{(Of course, if you do this from time to time, you will want a plugin instead of this monstrosity. But for some who are in a hurry and only need it once, this is a quick hack for your pasting pleasure:)}

:%s/\cbad\zejob/= ( submatch(0)[0] is# toupper(submatch(0)[0]) ? 'G' : 'g' ) . ( submatch(0)[1] is# toupper(submatch(0)[1]) ? 'OOD' : 'ood' )

Apart from the search pattern, you have to edit the four 'strings' in the replacement code: Edit the parts in bold:

:%s/\cbad\zejob/=
( submatch(0)[0] is# toupper(submatch(0)[0]) ? 'G' : 'g' ) .
( submatch(0)[1] is# toupper(submatch(0)[1]) ? 'OOD' : 'ood' )

Don't use this 'orange' version for pasting, since its linebreak characters will also break the command.

/\ze is vim regex syntactic sugar for marking a positive lookahead: The pattern after \ze is checked for, but not substituted.

*`is#`*?? Let me explain… (If interested.)

# (also in ==# and others) enforces case sensitivity. Otherwise, with :set ignorecase (which I use, because that is required for the useful :set smartcase), vim will consider 'a' == 'A'!!

Crazy as it is, we really should account for it: Because it is user-settings-dependent, == should NEVAR be used! (Except where that would actually be what you want.) I will even follow the recommendation to use ==# when comparing integers: http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/chapters/22.html#code-defensively

is# instead of ==# is another way of coding defensively: It improves type safety: http://google.github.io/styleguide/vimscriptguide.xml?showone=Type_checking#Type_checking
It should be used when comparing against a string literal.

'single-quoted' instead of "double quoted" strings are another good practice: http://google.github.io/styleguide/vimscriptguide.xml?showone=Strings#Strings

_{HT @fc. - this answer builds on their [answer](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/782511/case-preserving-substitute-in-vim/782617#782617), fixing a few shortcomings.}

Answer 5

If you're only matching an exact (case-independent) string with a few possible capitalizations, another possibility is:

:s/abc/\={'abc':'xyz','Abc':'Xyz'}[submatch(0)]/i

Answer 6

What about

:%s/\Cbadjob/goodjob/
:%s/\CBadJob/GoodJob/
:%s/\CbadJob/goodJob/  
:%s/\CBADJOB/GOODJOB/

See: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2287449/5599687

Answer 7

An alternative to the keepcase plugin is SmartCase - replacing words while keeping original case. (Don't let yourself be discourage by the bad ratings.)

Answer 8

Of course, you can do this:

First declare some variables containing cases and replacements:

let a = ['badjob', 'BadJob', 'badJob', 'BADJOB']

let b = ['goodjob', 'GoodJob', 'goodJob', 'GOODJOB']

Second, apply a for loop as follow:

for i in range(0,3) | exec '%s/' . a[i] . '/' . b[i] . '/g' | endfor

Note that range function starts at 0.

Best regards.