Identifying Identical Blocks of Code

Question

Say I have multiple blocks of the following code in a file (spaces is irrelavent):

sdgfsdg dfg
dfgdfgf ddfg
dfgdfgdfg  dfgfdg

How do you find/highlight all the occurrences?

What I ideally want to do is to visually select the code block and then press search to find all occurrences.

Answer 1

Quick and dirty partial solution:

:set hlsearch
*

The hlsearch option (on by default in some vim configs, but I always turn it off) makes vim highlight all found instances of the current search. Pressing * in normal mode searches for the word under the cursor. So this will highlight all instances of the word under the cursor.

Answer 2

Maybe you should look at : Search for visually selected text

I've taken it from here

Answer 3

Try this. Include this script somewhere in your runtimepath (see :help runtimepath). A simple option would be to put it in your vimrc. Visually select the thing you want to search for and press ,/ (the comma key and then the forward-slash key).

" Search for other instances of the current visual range

" This works by:
" <ESC>                Cancel the visual range (it's location is remembered)
" /                    Start the search
" <C-R>=               Insert the result of an expression on
"                      the search line (see :help c_CTRL-R_= )
" GetVisualRange()<CR> Call the function created below
" <CR>                 Run the search
vmap ,/ <ESC>/<C-R>=GetVisualRange()<CR><CR>

" Create the function that extracts the contents of the visual range
function! GetVisualRange()
    " Get the start and end positions of the current range
    let StartPosition = getpos("'<")
    let EndPosition = getpos("'>")

    " Prefix the range with \V to disable "magic"
    " See :help \V
    let VisualRange = '\V'

    " If the start and end of the range are on the same line
    if StartPosition[1] == EndPosition[1]
        " Just extract the relevant part of the line
        let VisualRange .= getline(StartPosition[1])[StartPosition[2]-1:EndPosition[2]-1]
    else
        " Otherwise, get the end of the first line
        let VisualRange .= getline(StartPosition[1])[StartPosition[2]-1:]
        " Then the all of the intermediate lines
        for LineNum in range(StartPosition[1]+1, EndPosition[1]-1)
            let VisualRange .= '\n' . getline(LineNum)
        endfor
        " Then the start of the last line
        let VisualRange .= '\n' . getline(EndPosition[1])[:EndPosition[2]-1]
    endif
    " Replace legitimate backslashes with double backslashes to prevent
    " a literal \t being interpreted as a tab
    let VisualRange = substitute(VisualRange, '\\[nV]\@!', '\\\\', "g")

    " Return the result
    return VisualRange

endfunction

Answer 4

The text being searched for is stored in the / register. You can't yank or delete directly into this register, but you can assign to it using `let'.

Try this:

• Use visual mode to highlight the code you want to search for
• Type "ay to yank that highlighted selection into register a
• Type :let @/ = @a to copy register a into the search register /

At this point, all code matching your selection will be highlighted, and you can navigate through occurrences using n/N just as you would a regular search.

Of course, you can use any temporary register instead of a. And it shouldn't be too difficult to get this command sequence mapped for easy use.