On Fri, Oct 04, 2002 at 10:48:15AM +1000, Angus Lees wrote:
> At 01 Oct 2002 11:27:17 +1000, Simon Wong wrote:
> > vi gurus,
> > I want to comment out every line in a file (inetd.conf) but not the ones
> > that already are.
>
> *cough* M-x comment-region *cough*
>
> (and of course there's a matching uncomment-region)
... in emacs Gus, in emacs ...
Now Simon, seeing as your editor of choice (vi) is somewhat more elegant,
you can do the following instead:
:%s/^[^#]/#
which, apart from being shorter than the emacs command, is also more
adaptable to other situations than the single purpose "M-x comment region".
dissecting this regular expression briefly (this form is worth learning):
: is the vi command line
% means to work on every line in the file
s/ ... / ... means to do a substitution (stuff matching what's
after the first slash is replaced with the stuff
after the second slash)
^ means the beginning of the line
[^#] means any character other than #
in english:
on every line of the file, put a hash at the beginning, if there is
not a hash there already.
which is basically what you asked for :)
cheers,
Conrad.
(I edit both ways)
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