Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!littlei!omepd!merlyn
From: merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: vi and sed questions
Message-ID: <4962@omepd.UUCP>
Date: 22 Sep 89 19:31:40 GMT
References: <4370002@hpavla.HP.COM>
Sender: news@omepd.UUCP
Reply-To: merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz)
Organization: Stonehenge; netaccess via Intel, Hillsboro, Oregon, USA
Lines: 31
In-reply-to: rowland@hpavla.HP.COM (Fred Rowland)

In article <4370002@hpavla.HP.COM>, rowland@hpavla (Fred Rowland) writes:
| vi question
[...]
| 	Example:
| 	lastname firstname middlename @address@ ...
| 	can be changed to
| 	firstname middlename lastname @address@ ...
| 	by this key mapping:
| 	:map ` 0dwf$P(CTRL-V)(Return)
| 	Just start at line 1, hold ` down, and watch the fun.
| 	But there ought to be a better way.

Entirely within vi:

:g/^\([^ ][^ ]*\)  *\([^ ][^ ]*  *[^ ][^ ]*\)/s//$2 $1/

or cheating with (some versions of) AWK,

:%|awk '{ tmp = $1; $1 = $2; $2 = $3; $3 = tmp; print }'

or cheating with Perl (of course!),

:%|perl -pe 's/^(\w+)\W+(\w+\W+\w+)/$2 $1/;'

Just another hacker,
(but why is this in unix.WIZARDS dudes?)
-- 
/== Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ====\
| on contract to Intel, Hillsboro, Oregon, USA                           |
| merlyn@iwarp.intel.com ...!uunet!iwarp.intel.com!merlyn	         |
\== Cute Quote: "Welcome to Oregon... Home of the California Raisins!" ==/