On Jan 16, 2012, at 1:53 PM, Tim Chase wrote: > On 01/16/12 12:04, Eric Weir wrote: > >> Thanks, Tim--and to everyone else who responded. My guess is >> it was hitting u while in visual mode. I have not advanced to >> the stage of using commands beginning with a g or a v. I'll >> check out the ones you suggest. > > well, the "v" ones are ones done in visual mode, which it sounds like you're > already using. Pressing u/U/~/? in visual mode transform the selection > accordingly (lowercasing, uppercasing, swap-casing, and ROT13ing). The other > "g" variants perform the same transformations over the text covered by > <motion>
I misspoke. Yes, I do use v and V--frequently! What puzzles me in this case is that the changes took place over an extended block of text. As I write I can see how that would have happened. Most of what was changed was in folds. If I selected the folds I would've selected everything in the fold. >> "diff" is one of those things I hear about here that I haven't >> gotten around to checking out, yet. Likewise with "grep". I've >> assumed they're more relevant to programmers, which I >> definitely am not. But as you suggest with "diff," I'm pretty >> certain that even programmers' tools can be put to good use in >> plain old writing--if you've gone to the trouble of finding >> out about them. > > "diff"ing just means comparing two files. For code, the standard diff occurs > line-wise, and Vim has great support for this. To try it out, take a file, > edit it and save it to a different name. Then start vim with > > vimdiff orig_file.txt modified_file.txt > > (or "vim -d orig_file.txt modified_file.txt", or issue ":diffthis" in each of > two existing windows/buffers you want to compare). You might want to walk > through > > :help diff.txt I took a look at that after reading the responses to my post. I'll be checking it out further, i.e., experimenting with actually using it. I can imagine it coming in useful sometime. > and try out what you see in there with two mostly-the-same junk files you > have floating around. The most helpful things to know are the dp/dg (or > ":diffput" and ":diffget" commands) for moving changes between the two files. > > As discussed recently in a parallel thread, if you have flowing text where > paragraphs are reflowed inserting linebreaks (rather than your paragraphs > being all on one line), it's not quite as useful. For that, you might > investigate "wdiff" to compare the files. Hmm. Haven't encountered the concept of "flowing" text previously. I believe my paragraphs have two linebreaks between them. Thanks, ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Eric Weir Decatur, GA [email protected] "What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit." - Chief Seattle -- You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php
