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Multi-line edit starting at the same character (= sign) [no macros?]

I'm working on an ansible playbook, where VIm seems to prove to be an extremely useful tool for (lots of similar patterns in style/formatting and such), and I'm hoping to take my current situation (since been written) to turn it into a Vim lesson.

I've made extensive use of code blocks to make multi-line edits, but I think I've reached their limit and wanted to reach out to figure out how I might approach making line edits more dynamically. In this scenario, I have a block of code that I'm trying to transform

from:

rcon.port=25575
rcon.password=strong-password
enable-rcon=true

into:

- { regexp: '^rcon.port', line: 'rcon.port=25575' }
- { regexp: '^rcon.password', line: 'rcon.password=strong-password' }
- { regexp: '^enable-rcon', line: 'enable-rcon=true' }

To do that, the first part is fairly simple. Shift-I, then ctrl-V for block, traverse lines to edit, type - { regexp: '^" to get to the following:

- { regexp: '^rcon.port=25575
- { regexp: '^rcon.password=strong-password
- { regexp: '^enable-rcon=true

Unfortunately, from there I'm a bit lost as the macros (and whether or not that's overkill or not) are still a bit unclear to me. Are there any possible approaches to solve this problem other than macros?

I'm not looking for a full solution, but simply a hint for the best (or only approach) here, and if there are any tricks to thinking about this in the Vim way.

Any links to good documentation/learning resources for macros would be AWESOME as well! I'm still new to Vim, so bear with me... thanks!

Solution

  • Perhaps something like the following regular expression substitutions:

    :%s/^\(.*\)$/- { regexp: '^\1' }/

    Or with all relevant lines visually selected:

    CTRL-o

    :s/^\(.*\)$/- { regexp: '^\1' }/

    I guess I should explain that a bit more:

    : Enter command mode.

    % Apply to all lines.

    s Substitute.

    /xxx/yyy/ Replace xxx with yyy.

    ^ Anchor at start of input string

    (xxx) (in match string) capture whatever matches xxx.

    \1 (in replacement string) replace with whatever matched (xxx).

    .* Match any amount of any characters.

    $ Anchor at end of input string.

    Replacement string is emitted into the result literally without any interpretation, except for stuff like \1.