Using vim in Linux to replace specific words

Question

I have a .txt file with information as following:

...

353 48 338 48 338 9 353 9 **personperson走** 281 64 259 64 259 4 281 4 person

353 48 338 48 338 9 353 9 **personabc** 281 64 259 64 259 4 281 4 person

353 48 338 48 338 9 353 9 **persondef** 281 64 259 64 259 4 281 4 person

...

I want to replace all those bold type words to person (The original words with normal type, not in bold)

like this:

...

353 48 338 48 338 9 353 9 **person** 281 64 259 64 259 4 281 4 person

353 48 338 48 338 9 353 9 **person** 281 64 259 64 259 4 281 4 person

353 48 338 48 338 9 353 9 **person** 281 64 259 64 259 4 281 4 person

...

I tried use the following command to replace, but the old_string part is different.

%s/old_string/new_string/g

Is there any way to use grep in (old_string) part to replace person*(stop at blank) to person

Answer 1

You can use the following in vim:

:%s/person\w\+/person/g

This will replace all words contining person followed by word characters by person

More informations about the substitue function in vim you can find here: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Search_and_replace

Answer 2

I would do:

%s/\<person\zs\S\+//g

• This won't replace foopersonbar by fooperson
• This will replace the Chinese word 走 (OP meant "stop at blank )"