Replacing text in vim can be quite frustrating especially since it doesn't have live feedback to what is changing. Today I was watching Josh Branchaud's Vim-Unalphabet series on Youtuve and realized that his vim was doing this and I had to have it.

https://twitter.com/_WaylonWalker/status/1346081617199198210

How to do it.

I had to do a bit of searching and found a great post from vimcasts that shows exactly how to get the live search and replace highlighting using inccomand

:h inccommand


'inccommand' 'icm'	string	(default "")
			global

	"nosplit": Shows the effects of a command incrementally, as you type.
	"split"	 : Also shows partial off-screen results in a preview window.

	Works for |:substitute|, |:smagic|, |:snomagic|. |hl-Substitute|

	If the preview is too slow (exceeds 'redrawtime') then 'inccommand' is
	automatically disabled until |Command-line-mode| is done.

Add this to your config

I believe that this is a neovim only feature, add it into your ~/.config/nvim/init.vim file. You can see it in my dotfiles as well.


set inccommand=nosplit

See it in Action

example live
substitution

The Video that inspired this

Check out Josh Branchaud's great series on the Vim-Unalphabet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jMiYtXz2QA