How can I mark/highlight duplicate lines in VI editor?
How would you go about marking all of the lines in a buffer that are exact duplicates of other lines? By marking them, I mean highlighting them or adding a character or something. I want to retain the order of the lines in the buffer.
Before:
foo
bar
foo
baz
After:
foo*
bar
foo*
baz
As an ex one-liner:
:syn clear Repeat | g/^\(.*\)\n\ze\%(.*\n\)*\1$/exe 'syn match Repeat "^' . escape(getline('.'), '".\^$*[]') . '$"' | nohlsearch
This uses the Repeat
group to highlight the repeated lines.
Breaking it down:
-
syn clear Repeat
:: remove any previously found repeats -
g/^\(.*\)\n\ze\%(.*\n\)*\1$/
:: for any line that is repeated later in the file- the regex
-
^\(.*\)\n
:: a full line -
\ze
:: end of match - verify the rest of the pattern, but don't consume the matched text (positive lookahead) -
\%(.*\n\)*
:: any number of full lines -
\1$
:: a full line repeat of the matched full line
-
-
exe 'syn match Repeat "^' . escape(getline('.'), '".\^$*[]') . '$"'
:: add full lines that match this to theRepeat
syntax group-
exe
:: execute the given string as an ex command -
getline('.')
:: the contents of the current line matched byg//
-
escape(..., '".\^$*[]')
:: escape the given characters with backslashes to make a legit regex -
syn match Repeat "^...$"
:: add the given string to theRepeat
syntax group
-
- the regex
-
nohlsearch
:: remove highlighting from the search done forg//
Justin's non-regex method is probably faster:
function! HighlightRepeats() range
let lineCounts = {}
let lineNum = a:firstline
while lineNum <= a:lastline
let lineText = getline(lineNum)
if lineText != ""
let lineCounts[lineText] = (has_key(lineCounts, lineText) ? lineCounts[lineText] : 0) + 1
endif
let lineNum = lineNum + 1
endwhile
exe 'syn clear Repeat'
for lineText in keys(lineCounts)
if lineCounts[lineText] >= 2
exe 'syn match Repeat "^' . escape(lineText, '".\^$*[]') . '$"'
endif
endfor
endfunction
command! -range=% HighlightRepeats <line1>,<line2>call HighlightRepeats()
None of the answers above worked for me so this is what I do:
- Sort the file using
:sort
- Execute command
:g/^\(.*\)$\n\1$/p