I don't think Vim's regular expressions are the best tool for this job. I mean, XML manipulation is much easier done in XSLT:
<?xml version="1.0"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";> <xsl:template match="article"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/> <AuthorList CompleteYN="Y"> <Author ValidYN="Y"> <xsl:copy-of select="AuthorList/Author[1]/*"/> </Author> </AuthorList> <xsl:copy-of select="node()[not(self::AuthorList)]"/> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> This does what you want in your example, assuming the source is a proper XML document (among other things there must be a "root tag" encompassing all the articles.) Invoke with "xsltproc fix-authors.xsl articles.xml" or with any other XSLT tool. To get back on-topic, I find these scripts make working with XSLT a bit less painful: xslhelper.vim http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1364 closetag.vim http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=13 This, on the other hand, is on my list of "things to check", but I still haven't got around to checking it out: xml.vim http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1397 Tobia
