A few not so random Linux links

First Vim and Matthieu's great introduction to search. Check his blog for more articles not only about Vim.

Staying in Vim space. Vimcasts is a series of short videos on Vim prepared by Drew.

The "Esc . Enter" (escpace, dot, enter) is a useful trick I learnt from the Charlie's blog post on SSH escape sequences. That's another good source of information on Linux CLI, e.g. how to find motherboard details from shell.

Links 

• https://thevaluable.dev/vim-search-find-replace/
• http://vimcasts.org/
• https://charlieharvey.org.uk/page/ssh_escape_hung_session
• https://charlieharvey.org.uk/page/motherboard_model_make_serial_linux_or_debian_bash_shell

Ansi control characters in Vim

The ANSI/VT100 terminals and their emulators allows to use escape sequences to  display colours and formatted text. (Check this link for more information on how to do this.) That's look cool in a terminal window. Problems starts when terminal output is redirected to a file (e.g. logs). Editors like Vim are virtual useless with such files, because files are full of "rubbish". At least by default, because for Vim there is a good plug-in called "Asci Highlighting". It takes escapes sequences and colour text appropriately.


Links:

• https://misc.flogisoft.com/bash/tip_colors_and_formatting 
• http://www.drchip.org/astronaut/vim/index.html#ANSIESC

Control terminal name and comment block in VIM

Somewhere (I think it was Stackoverflow) I found simple command to control the name of terminal from commandline which works very nice with iterm2 tabs on MacOSX and decided to add to my zsh environment this function:

termname() {
 echo -en "\e]1; $1 \a"
}

And if we are saying about Stackoverflow one of the most useful Vim suggestion I've ever found is this instruction to comment/uncomment a multiple lines in VIM.

Resource for vim

Just some link with useful Vim's advices.

General Vim advices

• https://code.google.com/p/vimcolorschemetest/ - many beautiful colourschemes.
• http://tnerual.eriogerg.free.fr/vimqrc.html - many shortcuts (to keep under the pillow).
• http://vimregex.com/ - all you might want to know about regex in Vim.
• http://dailyvim.blogspot.co.uk - plenty of short yet useful Vim advices.
• http://vimcasts.org/ - great Vim screencast with good support.

Vim and Python

• https://dev.launchpad.net/UltimateVimPythonSetup/
• http://justinlilly.com/vim/vim_and_python.html
• http://haridas.in/vim-as-your-ide.html
• http://blog.dispatched.ch/2009/05/24/vim-as-python-ide/
• http://www.sontek.net/blog/2011/05/07/turning_vim_into_a_modern_python_ide.html
• http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1494
• https://github.com/scrooloose/syntastic
• http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Omni_completion
• https://code.google.com/p/vimpdb/

Debian, Vim and alternatives

I don't know why, but default editor in Debian is not Vim, but Nano. I learned once that it can be change with a command, but has never remembered the actual name of it and since than had to check it each time in install Debian (not so often). Today decided to write it down, not to search too long next time. Maybe it's going to be useful to others:

aptitude install vim.nox
update-alternatives --set editor vim.nox

Short (mostly shell) fomulas

If you hit this website looking for a Linux/shell/UNIX related advice you might want to visit my identi.ca account. I post "short, magic", Linux formula there now. You know something like:

How to split lines in VIM?

s/\,/,[ctrl-V][Enter]/g

where [ctrl-V][Enter] - means type Ctrl+V and next Enter (you should see s/\,/,^M/g)

How to find the not commented line using Vim

The significant part of BOFH's live consist of editing config files. It's not so uncommon that you need find not commented lines (i.e. to find it something is set). With vim it's very easy:

/^[^#]

The above line command the editor to: find a line which doesn't start with # or rather: find a string which is at the beginning of a line with the first character anything else then #. This advice will work not only for vim i.e. you can use it in grep as well:

[user@server]$ grep  "^[^#]" modprobe.conf 
alias eth0 tg3
alias eth1 tg3
alias scsi_hostadapter mptbase
alias scsi_hostadapter1 mptspi

I discussed the similar case some time ago in this note: How to find line not starting with X in Vim.

Vim substitution

Let say that you want to add string 'bprdp' and the end of each line beginning with string 'bc' and ending with comma you should use following command:

:% g/^bc/s/\,$/, bprdp/

% means the whole file g/ for each line with pattern after '/' in above case pattern is ^bc line beginning with bc s/\,$/, bprdb/ substitute comma (\,) followed by end of line character ($) with ', bprdb'.

I wrote this message based on Vim regular expression and Vim Command Cheat Sheet.

Control the Vim from the edited file

One of the very nice Vim feature I've learnt recently is the possibility of controlling the Vim from a edited file. Chosen Vim commands may to be put in one of the first (specially formatted) file lines. The line format is describe in 'modeline' help keyword (:help modeline). It worth to remember that text before and after main part has to be commenting out directive. Therefore, for example the line in HTML might looks similar to:

<-- vim: set tabstop=4 noexpandtab:-->

for python:

# vim: tabstop=4 noexpandtab:

If you like to learn more please check the modeline keyword in Vim help.

update: I forgot to add that you need to set modeline in .vimrc file.

How to find the line not starting with "X" in Vim

I don't know why but most of Vim's search examples say nothing about how to find the line not starting with string "X". Finally, I found how to do this. I.e. following line find anything not started from del:

^[^d][^e][^l].*

For people not advance in regex. The consecutive signs means:

• ^ - a line starting with
• [^d] - character other than d;
• [^e] - character other than e;
• [^l] - character other than l;
• .* - any string (any character repeated any times).

I Gited my PhD

From the beginning of writing my PhD thesis I've been using RCS to store revision of my tex files. I even add settings to my GVIM that Ctrl+S make a new revision. Recently, when I started to finishing Phd ;), I found lack information about files other than main tex files (tabels, figures etc). I also wanted to be sure that change prepered on one machines can be easily reach from other ones. I decided to use something more complex than RCS and chose git. It is very easy to send commits to my academic server (git push ssh://user@server/~/PhD) and getting the latest version from it (git pull ssh://user@server/~/PhD). However, I found that it isn't so easy to edit files on my server. Directory doesn't change after pushing it from remote repository. My first work around was on the server first committing changes - it means reverting files to state before pushing, and latter reverting to previous version -it means last version committed from remote machine. Does it sound complicated? Yes! So I was trying find the other way. Today I found it. On remote machine I do: git add filename(if needed) git commit -a git push ssh://user@server/~/PhD Later on server: git reset --hard HEAD And now I has the same files at server and any remote machines. Nice. And I need only ssh to do it.

Hack a Rox

I like Rox, but it has some annoying small problems. One of them is that the program which open the file is running from home directory. Now I write short script which fix it for gvim and I'm thinking how to do global...

#!/bin/sh
cd `dirname "$@"`
gvim `basename "$@"`

Vim's colorscheme

I've found nice site with sample of Vim's colorschemse. I miss only python samples.

Overwriting a line in Vim

Finally, I've learn how to overwrite the whole line in Vim. First you have to yank the line you would like to copy (yy), next to mark the destination line (V) and paste the first line (P or p on it), what gives VP. I found it here.

Vim/Vi Cheat Sheet and Tutorial

Deelopers of ViEmu published very nice help for Vim. I've missed something like this.