1 Today I was toying with something absolutely not work related and I wanted to
2 share it with somebody to show how awesome the vim text editor can be.
3
4 First though, I really would like to thank Bram Moolenaar for contributing such
5 a useful tool to the world. It may not be the easiest thing in the world to
6 learn, but once you've got even the most basic functionality figured out, you
7 can do so much more than other editors will allow. That all goes without even
8 saying how cool its interface is. If you realy like vim, you should head on
9 over to http://www.vim.org/index.php[his website] and buy a
10 http://www.freewear.org/?org=Vim[tshirt],
11 http://www.vim.org/stickers.php[sticker], or a
12 http://www.vim.org/posters.php[poster].
13
14 What I was dabbling with was vim colors for syntax highlighting. It turns out
15 that the stock install of vim for Arch linux comes with almost 200 color
16 schemes. I really wanted to see them all but didn't want to have to keep typing
17 ":colors schemename". That is a lot of repeat key presses after all, something
18 we Linux folk really are not fond of when faced with a situation that a
19 computer can handle for us (automation - what a novel idea).
20
21 After some searching, I discovered
22 http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Switch_color_schemes#Switching_colors[this vim
23 script] that will change your color scheme forwards or backwards by pressing F8
24 or Shift+F8, respectively. Really neat, but not super automated still. Who
25 wants to set this sucker to a timer and watch it switch every 200 milliseconds?
26 I do I do I do!
27
28 That vim script provides a few functions that are bound to the afforementioned
29 hotkeys. The function we are immediately concerned with is called
30 _NextColor_. This will switch the color scheme to the next in the list.
31
32 Here's where vim gets really cool, even though it already is.
33
34 It turns out that there is a list in this vim script that is a statically coded
35 array of scheme names, so if you have more themes installed than those listed
36 in the array, you're out of luck unless you manually add them. Now, at this
37 point we could probably have vim run a shell command and massage the output to
38 make an array for us at runtime, but where's the fun in that (that's just a
39 little TOO automated for the purposes of this article)? I want to rock some vim
40 find and replace regex!
41
42
43 [[inserting-shell-command-output]]
44 == Inserting Shell Command Output
45
46 So now, the first thing we're going to do is insert the output of a shell
47 command to our vim file, specificall +ls -1+. When in command mode, run
48
49 ----
50 :read !ls -1 /usr/share/vim/vim73/colors/
51 ----
52
53 This should insert a metric bitt load (teehee) of lines if you have very
54 many color schemes.
55
56
57 [[ranges-in-regex]]
58 == Ranges in Regex
59
60 From here, we want to massage the data with a few vim find and replace regexes.
61 Establish the line that your file list ends at. For me, this was line 207, but
62 this very likely won't be the case for you. Move the cursor to the first line
63 and run the following in command mode
64
65 ----
66 :.,207s/\.vim//
67 ----
68
69 This will do a find and replace on the text range starting where the cursor is
70 currently (the .) and ending at line 207 (the 207). After that it's just a
71 standard regex substitution. This should chop off the '.vim' at the end of each
72 filename.
73
74 Next, we need to remove the new lines, comma delimit, and encase in single
75 quotes to match the array format. Again, place your cursor at the first line of
76 your list. Remember the line number of the last line in the list?
77
78 ----
79 :.,207s/\(.*\).vim\n/'\1', /
80 ----
81
82 In this cryptic regex, we replace from the current line (the .) to line 207 any
83 line containing .vim with a line break after it (the .vim\n) with the text
84 preceeding the .vim ( captured by +<\(.*\)+), encasing that value with single
85 quotes and ending with a comma space (the +'\1',+) encase the entire string
86 with a [ ] and you'll be set. Just erase the old array set your new one to
87 +s.mycolors+ near the top.
88
89
90 [[setting-the-rotate-timer]]
91 == Setting the Rotate Timer
92
93 Now there's one piece left: set the timer. In command mode, do the following
94 and hit enter
95
96 ----
97 :while 1 | sleep 1000m | call NextColor(1) | endwhile
98 ----
99
100 That will rotate through every theme you just added to your array every 1000
101 milliseconds. Just change the +1000m+ to whatever you want to make it update at
102 different intervals.
103
104 Hello worthless but super awesome functionality!
105
106 ----
107 :while 1 | sleep 1000m | call NextColor(0) | endwhile
108 ----
109
110
111 Category:Linux
112 Category:Vim
113
114
115 // vim: set syntax=asciidoc:
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