If you’re working in Vim, one of the most powerful text editors, you might often need to replace multiple instances of a string throughout a file. Vim offers a handy way to perform global text substitutions with the following command:
%s/old-text/new-text/gWhat Does This Command Do?
:: Enters command mode in Vim, allowing you to execute commands.%: Refers to the entire file. It tells Vim to search through all lines of the file. Without%, Vim would only search the current line.s: Stands for “substitute,” which is Vim’s command for search and replace.old-text: The text string you want to search for and replace.new-text: The text string you want to use as the replacement.g: This flag stands for “global,” meaning Vim will replace all instances ofold-texton each line. Without thegflag, only the first occurrence on each line would be replaced.
Example Use Case
Suppose you have a file with many occurrences of the word “apple” and want to change them all to “orange.” You would run:
%s/apple/orange/gThis command will go through the entire file and replace every occurrence of “apple” with “orange.”