Replacement in VIM with regular expression matched part unchanged

Question

Suppose I want to append two digit numbers in my file with "some_thing".

Like from this:

12 23 45

to

12_something 23_something 45_something

How can I do this using regular expression replacement?

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-10 03:25:49Z

up vote 3 down vote accepted

& is the whole match, so just use &_something in the substitute operation.

answered May 10 '12 at 3:25

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
11.5k11631

Thanks, it works! – xiaohan2012 May 10 '12 at 3:35

Is there a difference between using & and \0? – Bernhard May 10 '12 at 5:38

2

@Bernhard: not according to sub-replace-special, except varying by the magic option. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams May 10 '12 at 5:40

1 Answer