Remove colon using VI

Question

I am trying do a find and replace in VI to remove a timestamp. I usually do this in VI using the S command but how do I tell VI I need to remove colons when its part of the structure of the VI command itself

EX: " xxxxx xxxxx 24:00:00 CDT"

tried

s:24:00:00 CDT::g

s:"24:00:00 CDT"::g

s:/:::g

Any assistance is appreciated.

Answer 1

Normally, vi uses the character that follows the command letter as seperator.

Try this:

s!24:00:00 CDT!!g

Answer 2

The problem here is not matching a colon, but that you've been taught that vim MUST use a colon to seperate it's regex. This is incorrect.

awk/vi/perl/ruby (and many more) let you specify wahtever delimiter that you want. This character is the one following the command character (in our case an S), eg:

s/hello/there/
s:hello:there:
s@hello@there@

are all the same regex, just with different delimiters. This flexability means that if you often use /, but you then need to match a / in the regex, then you can just switch to some other delimiter, eg:

sMhel/loMthereM

Though "M" might not be the best choice when the regex contains text -- it depends on your style and what you're matching really.

You can even use brackets. For a single regex it is:

s[hello]

or

s(hello)

I think for the search and replace style you can use s[hello][there] or possibly even s[hello](there). But this last sentence about the brackets is a half remembered guess from when I alst used perl.

Answer 3

In my version of vi, I can do the following to remove colons from a line. YMMV.

:s/://g

Answer 4

s/\d\+:\d\+:\d\+ CDT//g works for me:

initial content:

xxxxx xxxxx 24:00:00 CDT

after command:

xxxxx xxxxx

if you want to be sure it will only affect timestamps (as is, that regex above changes any number of digits > 1), use

s/\d\d:\d\d:\d\d CDT//g

where the final g changes all occurrences of the pattern, not just the first one.

If you have more than one timezone in the list, group them:

:s/\d\+:\d\+:\d\+^Y \(CDT\|UDT\)//g

Answer 5

It's not really part of the command, since it should let you use any delimiter you like.

I'd probably try:-

%s/\d\{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}//g