String and List Manipulation Functions in Vim

the line where the cursor is. The substitute() function does something similar to the ":substitute" command. The first argument is the string on which to perform the substitution. The second argument is the pattern, the third the replacement string. Finally, the last arguments are the flags. The setline() function sets the line, specified by the first argument, to a new string, the second argument. In this example the line under the cursor is replaced with the result of the substitute(). Thus the effect of the three statements is equal to: > :substitute/\a/*/g Using the functions becomes interesting when you do more work before and after the substitute() call. FUNCTIONS *function-list* There are many functions. We will mention them here, grouped by what they are used for. You can find an alphabetical list here: |builtin-function-details|. Use CTRL-] on the function name to jump to detailed help on it. String manipulation: *string-functions* nr2char() get a character by its number value list2str() get a character string from a list of numbers char2nr() get number value of a character str2list() get list of numbers from a string str2nr() convert a string to a Number str2float() convert a string to a Float printf() format a string according to % items escape() escape characters in a string with a '\' shellescape() escape a string for use with a shell command fnameescape() escape a file name for use with a Vim command tr() translate characters from one set to another strtrans() translate a string to make it printable keytrans() translate internal keycodes to a form that can be used by |:map| tolower() turn a string to lowercase toupper() turn a string to uppercase charclass() class of a character match() position where a pattern matches in a string matchbufline() all the matches of a pattern in a buffer matchend() position where a pattern match ends in a string matchfuzzy() fuzzy matches a string in a list of strings matchfuzzypos() fuzzy matches a string in a list of strings matchstr() match of a pattern in a string matchstrlist() all the matches of a pattern in a List of strings matchstrpos() match and positions of a pattern in a string matchlist() like matchstr() and also return submatches stridx() first index of a short string in a long string strridx() last index of a short string in a long string strlen() length of a string in bytes strcharlen() length of a string in characters strchars() number of characters in a string strutf16len() number of UTF-16 code units in a string strwidth() size of string when displayed strdisplaywidth() size of string when displayed, deals with tabs setcellwidths() set character cell width overrides getcellwidths() get character cell width overrides reverse() reverse the order of characters in a string substitute() substitute a pattern match with a string submatch() get a specific match in ":s" and substitute() strpart() get part of a string using byte index strcharpart() get part of a string using char index slice() take a slice of a string, using char index in Vim9 script strgetchar() get character from a string using char index expand() expand special keywords expandcmd() expand a command like done for `:edit` iconv() convert text from one encoding to another byteidx() byte index of a character in a string byteidxcomp() like byteidx() but count composing characters charidx() character index of a byte in a string utf16idx() UTF-16 index of a byte in a string repeat() repeat a string multiple times eval() evaluate a string expression execute() execute an Ex command and get the output win_execute() like execute() but in a specified window trim() trim characters from a string gettext() lookup message translation List manipulation: *list-functions* get() get an item without error for wrong index len() number of items in a List empty()

This section details Vim's functions for string and list manipulation. It describes how functions like getline(), substitute(), and setline() work together and highlights the importance of combining functions for more complex tasks. It then provides an extensive list of string manipulation functions, including nr2char(), list2str(), char2nr(), and many others, each designed for tasks like character conversion, string formatting, escaping, translation, case conversion, pattern matching, string indexing, length calculation, substring extraction, expansion, encoding conversion, string repetition, and evaluation. The section also touches on list manipulation functions, mentioning get(), len(), and empty().