Live Substitution In Neovim
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

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...

Date: January 4, 2021

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 <https://vimcasts.org/episodes/neovim-eyecandy/> that shows exactly how to get the live search and replace highlighting using inccomand

:h inccommand
─────────────

[code]
  '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 <https://github.com/WaylonWalker/devtainer/blob/main/nvim/.config/nvim/settings.vim#L155> as well.

[code]
  set inccommand=nosplit

See it in Action
────────────────

Image: example live substitution <https://images.waylonwalker.com/nvim-live-substitute-inccommand.gif> <https://images.waylonwalker.com/nvim-live-substitute-inccommand.gif>

The Video that inspired this
────────────────────────────

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

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