In vim docs, there is example like this:
g/pat/s/pat.*/to/
As far as I know, it is also possible to do it without g:
%s/pat.*/to/
Is there a difference, a reason to prefer the
first form, the longer for with 'g' ?
I don't think in the example you gave, that there's a significant
difference, if any.
However, where the pattern (so to speak) is useful, is where you
want something like
:g/pat1/s/pat2/replacement
where rather than using the same pattern, you have two different
patterns. I use this frequently to do things like
:g/echo/s/^/#
to comment out any lines in a script that use the "echo" command.
Yes, this could be rewritten as
:%s/.*echo/#&
but the former makes clearer sense in my head.
It's particularly useful if you have pieces that you're searching
for that overlap:
text: aaabbbcccddd
g/b.*d/s/a.*c/XXX
where the pattern matches one fragment, and the s// matches an
overlapping, but not-quite-the-same-end-points fragment of the line.
-tim
