Hide all (not) matching strings in Vim

Question

Is it possible to show / hide all relevant lines in vi or Vim? Do not select, but just show only those lines.

For example, I have text with the word word ERROR . How to make it show only rows containing ERROR and how to show only rows without ERROR ?

Is there a solution without deleting all matching lines and then just undo it?

Answer 1

Do you know about the command :global ? Does this do what you want?

 :g/ERROR 

and for the opposite:

 :g!/Error 

or equivalently:

 :v/Error 

Answer 2

Another approach, depending on your use case, will use vimgrep , and its results will be quickfix . You can do the following:

:vimgrep pattern % will search for the current file and bring you to the first search result. More importantly, it also puts the results on the quickfix list.

:copen will open the quick delete list in a separate quick fix window. This way you will have a separate window with all the lines from your last vimgrep. In the quickfix window, you can press Enter or double-click on a line to go to the corresponding line in the source file.

:colder will allow you to revert to old fastfix lists (older vimgrep results). And :cnewer moving on to newer search results.

Please note that the quickfix list is also updated at startup :make (which is why it is called quickfix for error correction). Because of this, there is also an alternative to the quick fix list called the “location list”. Instead, you use :lvimgrep , then use the l-prefixed commands, not the c-prefixed - :lopen :lolder :lnewer .

There is, of course, much more that you can do. See :help quickfix .

PS, You said that you do not need an approach that deletes lines and then cancels them. But since you marked g/ERROR as the answer, I thought I would point out a quick and dirty way to do g!/ERROR/d . Then you can easily undo it using u . You can also do FYI :set hlsearch to highlight patterns matching the commands :g .

Answer 3

you can use

 :g/ERROR/ 

to print all lines using ERROR

There is also a Vim plugin that I saw many times, but did not use: foldsearch: fold lines that do not match the given pattern

Answer 4

The best way to do it →

 :vimgrep /something/g % | copen 

This will open a match list for your keyword, and also display only matching lines in the quick delete window.

Answer 5

:vimgrep/something/g % | copen :vimgrep/something/g % | copen :vimgrep/something/g % | copen :vimgrep/something/g % | copen works amazingly. Also :g/<pattern>/d can be used to delete lines with a pattern

Answer 6

You probably mean a command in less than vi vim and / pattern / which shows lines containing / pattern / (e.g. grep).

Answer 7

in case you use fzf you can use:

• :Lines in all open files
• :BLines only in open buffer
• :Rg [pattern] using ripgrep