In the vim text editor, if I want to remove every line in a file that does not contain the word "FALL" in capital letters, I can use
:v/FALL/d, i.e.,
type the colon key and then v, which works
like the grep command
grep -v to select only lines in a file that don't contain a
specified text
string.
The particular text on which you wish vim to searh is preceded and followed by
the slash
delimiter with a d at the end to specify you wish those lines
not containing the text, e.g., FALL in this case, to be deleted. If I want to
delete only those lines that begin with FALL, I can use
:v/^FALL/d as the
caret specifies that the text should occur at
the beginning of lines (a dollar sign, $, would indicate I wanted to select
only lines where the text was found at the end of the line). Note:
you can also use :g!/^FALL/d to achieve the same end —
without the exclamation mark after the global command, all
lines containing FALL would be deleted, but as the exclamation mark
represents "not", all lines not containing FALL at the beginning of the line
are deleted.
