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I'm an emacs newbie and am using evil mode for text formatting. I have some text in the following format:

word1 = meaning with elaboration; word2 = simpler meaning; word3; word4 = much long explanation needed;

and want to wrap each of word1, word2, word3 etc.. into \textif\textbf{word1}}, \textif\textbf{word2}} etc. and transform the original text as

\textif{\textbf{word1}} = meaning with elaboration;
\textif{\textbf{word2}} = simpler meaning;
\textif{\textbf{word3}};
\textif{\textbf{word4}} = much long explanation needed;

In VIM, I verified separately that the following search+replace pattern applies the changes for word2, word3 and word4 (I know this pattern won't change word1)

:%s,;\s*\(\w*\),; \r\\textit\{\\textbf\{\1\}\},g

However, this doesn't work in emacs. All I see is Ex: Syntax error

Does vim-style search+replace work in emacs? Is there a way to apply the same search+replace in emacs?

linuxfan
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  • I cannot reproduce that, neither from my fully customized Emacs setup nor from a minimal Evil setup (run make emacs inside a Git checkout of Evil, decline running tests, C-x b foo.tex, M-x tex-mode, insert the text above, execute the ex command above). In both cases I see "[No match]" and upon executing the commands, I get no replacements. Ensure you're using the latest version and provide a minimal set of reproduction instructions. – wasamasa Dec 18 '20 at 10:25
  • Also consider that you have the choice between using Emacs-flavored regex (fast, verbose) and Vim-flavored regex (slow, buggy). Consider using the former to avoid bugs. – wasamasa Dec 18 '20 at 10:29

1 Answers1

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Evil's vim-style search-replace does work, but you have to modify it slightly:

:%s/; \(\w+\)/;\n\\textit{\\textbf{\1}}/g will perform the replacement you want (this won't affect word1, but you've already mentioned that).

You have to use / to separate the s, match, replacement and the global g.

\s* doesn't match the whitespace characters as expected.

aNaravi
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  • Can someone show me the emacs-way to achieve the same? I've tried 'M-x regex-replacewith a few regular expressions but haven't found a solution yet. My replace-regex;[:space]+[^[:space]+]` doesn't work – linuxfan Dec 19 '20 at 02:04