WareLogging, VimEditor, PerlLanguage.

= perl compatible regular expressions =

[http://vim.sourceforge.net/tips/tip.php?tip_id=393 Perl compatible regular expressions]. For most of the one-off expressions you'll ever write, there's a way to do what you want in vim. That said, if you're used to Perl, translating between the two dialects becomes painful for anything much beyond a simple search and replace. Instead:

# Verify in :ver that +perl or +perl/dyn is compiled in.
# Install Perl if necessary. On Windows, ActivePerl is required.
# Type  :perldo s/searchme/replaceme/g

Or:

 :%!perl -pi -e 's/<text>/\n/'

On Debian, you can

 apt-get install vim-perl

<[Brennen]> When using perldo to perform substitutions, keep in mind that $_ is set to the current line ''without'' a newline - so if you're expecting whitespace at the end of the line, you may not find it.

This works, though:

 :perldo s/(http\S+?)(\s|$)/"$1"$2/g

Note the (\s|$).