Confirm replacements

Vim has a very robust search and replace capability with the substitution :s command. We’ve written plenty of tips about subtitiution before but one I’ve been using more frequently recently is the /c flag to confirm each replacement.

• :%s/foo/bar/c – Substitute foo with bar in the whole file but prompt for Confirmation before each replacement.

With the /c flag appended to your substitution command, Vim will successively iterate over each matching pattern. It will pause to ask you if you want to make each replacement:

replace with bar (y/n/a/q/l/^E/^Y)?

There’s a lot of options there so let’s enumerate each of them:

• y – Yes, make the substitution
• n – No, skip to the next
• a – Replace All the remaining matches without confirmation
• q – Quit substitution and make no further changes
• l – Last one! Make this change, but quit after this one
• ^E – Press <ctrl-e> to scroll down in the file and get a better view of the surrounding lines
• ^Y – Press <ctrl-y> to scroll up