Vim：技术方法

Question

I've got a 2,500 line document that is the output of a datasheet (excel). It's consistent and repeating about 100 times within the document - though not perfectly repeating per line because the data per cycle varies slightly. On each (25-line) cycle, I could gather at least 30 pieces of information for uploading into a custom-built uploader to fill dbs in a website.

My first thought is to search/replace using the submatch(*) to structure the captured data correctly for my use in uploading it into my own db, like:

data1:data2,data3a|data3b|data3c,data4:data5

At first glance there is enough vim registers to begin, append and then replace and dump (overwrite) the registers before the next cycle - and then repeat. But in the future I might want to extend this capturing of data, which might max out my registers (az, 0-9) AND make it difficult to keep track of what's what (counting delimiters). So I am contemplating functions to pass the captured text along with a name to call it (bypassing the replace/submatch idea) in order to be set (let) for retrieval and proper formatting at the end of each cycle. I see a function like:

function SetVar(varname, varval)
    exe "let @".a:varname." = '".a:varval."'"
  endfunction

I would capture the data like:

:/sectionHeader/sectionFooter/g/(pieceOfInfo)/call SetVar('varname1',@)/

where the sectionHeader and sectionFooter define the cycling portion (range) within the document. I would probably use RegExps to capture these section names and use a portion of the name to label the variable (instead of varname1) - or maybe an incrementing variable like "i".

and then format the final output like:

varname1:varname2,varname3|varname4|varname5,varname6:varname7 

I would think this would be much easier to maintain as the variable names could be made to make sense, thus keeping track through the upload process (and possible future expansion).

Questions:

1. Does this make sense and is it reasonable as an architectural approach to this solution?

2. Can you suggest a better approach?

Answer 1

Wouldn't an awk script be a better choice for this? You could do the same sort of search & replace, and have a separate output file, and awk's line-by-line operation should avoid some of the issues you might encounter in trying to do this in Vim.

Of course, if you'll never repeat this process, Vim might not be a bad call.