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VIM swap words

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Swap words in VIM

To replace every occurrence of “and” with “OR” and every occurrence of “OR” with “and” in Vim, you can use a :global command with a regular expression to swap them. Here’s how you can do it:

  1. Open your file in Vim.
  2. Press Esc to make sure you’re in normal mode.
  3. Use this command:
:%s/\(and\)\|\(OR\)/\=submatch(0) == 'and' ? 'OR' : 'and'/g

Explanation:

  • :%s/ – This tells Vim to search and replace throughout the entire file.
  • \(and\)\|\(OR\) – This regular expression matches either “and” or “OR” (note that \| is the “or” operator in Vim’s regex).
  • \=submatch(0) == 'and' ? 'OR' : 'and' – This part uses Vim’s expression evaluation (\=) to check if the match is “and” and replace it with “OR”, otherwise replace “OR” with “and”.
  • /g – This flag ensures all occurrences are replaced, not just the first one.

This will swap all “and” with “OR” and vice versa in a single operation.

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