vim visual block search/replace only replacing first occurrence on a line

Question

I'm trying the following command in visual mode to attempt a global find/replace on a block of text

:'<,'>s/red/green/g

The text looks like this

red red red blue red red red blue

And the result

green red red blue red red red blue

Instead of what I am expecting with the g switch:

green green green blue green green green blue

Any idea what causes this behaviour? If it is default behaviour how do I make g really really global?

Thanks

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 03 '12 at 08:11

8

You've probably :set gdefault; this inverts the meaning of the g substitution flag. You can check where it got set via :verbose set gdefault? and temporarily turn it off via :set nogdefault, but you probably want to find the place where it got set and remove it from there.

answered Dec 03 '12 at 08:11

Ingo Karkat

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Thank you! It was set in my .vimrc – darryn.ten Dec 03 '12 at 08:17

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 03 '12 at 07:56

0

I tried this in my vim and get the correct result as:

green green green blue green green green blue

Maybe there is something in your .vimrc changing the default behavior. Would you like to attach it to this thread?

answered Dec 03 '12 at 07:56

imapollo

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vim visual block search/replace only replacing first occurrence on a line

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