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Serhat Teker
Serhat Teker

Posted on • Originally published at tech.serhatteker.com on

Vim Delete Line Vim - Delete Lines with Regex

Global

The ex command :g -global command, is very useful for acting on lines that match a pattern.

Usually it works like this:

:[range]g/pattern/cmd
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Delete contains

To delete all lines that contain "price" you can use:

:g/price/d
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If you want to use multiple pattern you can use 'or' \|:

:g/price\|customer\|secret/d
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Delete not contains

To delete lines that does NOT contain "price" you can use:

:g!/price/d
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~Some extras

Delete all empty lines

:g/^$/d
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Or deleting all lines that are empty or that contain only whitespace:

:g/^\s*$/d
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Trim all whitespaces at the end of a line

Deletes any trailing whitespace at the end of each line. If no trailing
whitespace is found nothing changes, and the e flag means no error is
displayed. Since if nothings is found E486: Pattern not found error occurs.

:%s/\s\+$//e
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Delete commented lines

:g/^<language comment string>/d
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E.g for python:

:g/^#/d
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All done!

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