vim find report AND store number of occurrences in buffer

Question

i get this part: s/pattern//gn using vim to report number of occurrences of "pattern".

but is there some way to store that reported number in a buffer for later use?

Answer 1

First of all, I guess what you meant "buffer" is "register/variable".

There are different ways to achieve that:

• external command is most direct way, IMO

   let a=system('grep -c "yourPattern" '.expand("%:p")) 

  Thus, variable a contains the count. But you need have grep available, and the vim buffer should be a file.

• With searchpos() function and loop. From col1 line1, calling searchpos() function, accumulate the matches, till the end of the file/buffer. You need implement the loop.

• with redirect ( :redir ) to redirect the message to register, then do further processing. Thus you can have x matches in y lines message in a register and pick the x out later.

I would prefer the first way.

:h item will show you the help doc for the item (function usage/option/command etc), do this if you didn't understand some command/function.

But first you should do :h window , to know what is a buffer/window in vim.