I rarely use global find and replace nowadays (just for complex regex replaces)....

Already__Taken · on April 6, 2013

You know crt + H (global find and replace) takes what's highlighted and uses the last thing you looked for it nothing is highlighted.

robin_reala · on April 6, 2013

Ctrl+cmd+g is cmd+d for all occurrences on the page.

weaksauce · on April 6, 2013

visual selection replacement is good too.

:'<,'>s/this/to that/g

I think vim does that automatically when you have a selection active and hit :

caioariede · on April 6, 2013

Note that this will replace over the entirely lines even if it's a blockwise selection.

So you might consider using :'<,'>s/\%Vthis/to that/g

weaksauce · on April 7, 2013

It might be a setting or something but it definitely doesn't do that on my machine or the linux machine I have in the cloud.

this ipsum dolor sit amet

select the middle 3 lines and do what I said will give you:

this ipsum dolor sit amet

to that ipsum dolor sit amet

this ipsum dolor sit amet

MetaCosm · on April 6, 2013

That sounds like a lot more work...

njoh · on April 6, 2013

No it's not! Plus, you'd get to see the replacement targets while you're holding the keys, so you'd be more confident about the final result.

Just give Ctrl-D a try for a couple of days.. It's a total different user experience compared to the traditional find/replace method.

dmatlack · on April 6, 2013

Do you mean it's a lot of work to type in that prefix? Because vim automatically inserts it for you when you enter command mode while something is visually selected. A making a visual selection is very quick and easy.