On 11/03/12 14:11, Chris Lott wrote: > I have a large text file in which I need to remove all punctuation, > all special characters ("smart quotes") and the like, and a bunch of > selected words. > > Can this be done within Vim?
Yes. Oh, you want to know *how*? :-P The smart-quotes are the hardest ones to do, but if you can enter them in vim (or select+yank them, and then paste them into an Ex command using control+R followed by a double-quote), they should be usable: :%s/\([[:punct:]]\+\|”\|“\|selected\|words\)//g Alternatively, you might want to specify what *is* allowed and invert it: :%s/\W\+//g " that's "everything that isn't a Word character" or :%s/[^[:alnum:][:space]]\+//g "all but alnum & spaces" which you can read about at :help :alnum: :help /\W :help /\| -tim -- 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