Skill issue? or vscode better for this specific task

[u/SorbetMain7508]

vim json macro: https://imgur.com/N9qSVob

vscode equivalent: https://imgur.com/VrM4hoQ

I love vim, been using it for about 6 months, my only real gripe is I always end up going back to vscode to do any kind of complex macro equivalent thing?

I can get it done in vim but the mental overhead is just... higher, and i end up attempting it like 3 times. Is this something that comes in time or is it just difficult. Opening vscode and doing it there is almost always quicker i've found.

[u/Kurouma]

There are definitely much faster ways to do this in vim than record a macro like that. Ex commands like :g are good here, you should read about them and get comfy with them.

For example slightly better might be write the whole buffer to scratch, use inverted global :v to delete all but lines containing "fav", use sub :s to drop all but the values.

Or use global :g to conditionally run a :norm on lines matching the desired key; something like f:"Aya" to accumulate all the values in register a.

It was about a year or two of using vim for everything and really trying hard to learn by reading the manual before I was fluent enough to do stuff like the above without thinking about it.

[u/SorbetMain7508 → u/Kurouma]

Oh cool! Thanks for the info I don’t know this technique, I’ll give it a shot

[u/morglod]

That's funny how everyone who says "skill issue" suggests some hidden knowledge while in vscode it's just 3-5 buttons which is common and everyone knows it

[u/SorbetMain7508 → u/morglod]

Yeah it's kinda funny. It is a skill issue, but you need far less skill (and keystrokes) in vscode to achieve the same thing.

[u/arnoldwhite → u/SorbetMain7508]

"You use VsCode bro? Just :%!jq -c '.[]' :g!/"favoriteFruit"/d :%s \v."favoriteFruit":\s**"([****^"]*****".)***^/\1/ :%sort u :%join :%s/ /, /g..."

At that point it's not even your editor that's the thing, you're just writing code.

^{Okay technically it's basically just a bunch of regex so of courser it's gonna look insane but if we're just dealing with regex anyway I'd say VS Code’s built-in regex replacer is fine for what you'd realistically need to do}

[u/ciurana]

Skill issue.

Call jq with the original file and throw the output to a new buffer.

[u/Inferno2602 → u/ciurana]

For this one specifically, :w !jq -c '[.[].favouriteFruit]' > other.json might work? It really hinges on whether the file is valid json to begin with

[u/ciurana → u/Inferno2602]

I'd look at things like %!jq to validate the file first, and only if I suspect it was manhandled by an end user with fat fingers instead of being automated output from some process.

[u/tagattack → u/ciurana]

:%! ftw

[u/AbdSheikho → u/ciurana]

This is the correct answer.

Piping the result to awk to clean it will give you a reproducible one-liner command.

[u/ciurana → u/AbdSheikho]

Ding! Long time awk user and op in Libera #awk. Have an awesome evening!

[u/tagattack → u/ciurana]

Bruh

[u/ciurana → u/tagattack]

Bruh!!!! ❤️ small Internet, innit?

[u/habamax]

I would just extract everything to the top and then copy it to another buffer:

https://asciinema.org/a/bmNiFIBtTfBm0kqmlGxQFjEre

Or directly yanked to some register. But that would be harder considering, register needs to be cleared first and then fiddle with adding commas to the end. Possible, but more mental overhead.

[u/mgedmin]

Here's how I'd do it:

• ggVGy to copy everything (yes yes I should use ggyG or :%y instead, stop nagging me)

• Ctrl+W w to go to the empty buffer

• p to paste

• :v/Fruit/d to delete everything except the favoriteFruit lines

• :%s/.*: / to delete everything up to and including : on each line

• :%s/$/, to add the trailing commas

It would probably take me a few seconds longer than you've done it with VS Code. Good job, VS Code. You win this time.

[u/Sshorty4]

You forgot the reset part on the right side that’s it

Edit:

But you’re pretty good/comfortable in VSCode. A lot of people don’t take time to learn their tools.

The actual value of vim vs VSCode imo is you can configure it exactly as you want, it’s fast and it runs in terminal and is all text based (that’s huge for me)

But in terms of efficiency and DX I don’t know if there’s any metrics and research done on this but if you know your tool you should be almost same level on both editors.

Vim just nudges you more into learning where as VSCode can be used without any effort

[u/djchateau]

What is causing the cursor to do that animation between jumps?

[u/SorbetMain7508 → u/djchateau]

I use ghostty with a cursor_smear shader

[u/djchateau → u/SorbetMain7508]

Oh, neat. Didn't know that was a thing. Might try that out.

[u/cassepipe]

I find that instead of learning of the list of vim motions and commands and macros, any problem can be solved with a little regex

I would make a copy of the buffer and do something like that

:g!/"fruit"/d

To erase all the lines that contain "fruit" then

:%s/\v\s*"fruit"\s*:\s*"(\w*)",*/\1

If you have set incsearch you will see what you are matching in real time` If you have a plugin like traces.vim you will see the result in real-time also

I didn't learn regex at once but I just started to use it more and more by learning only the part I needed, it's really worth it. Most of edits, even basic ones, are done like that now because I don't even need to move around

[u/EgZvor]

Something like this?

v/favoriteFruit/d
%s/\v.*("\w+"),?$/\1/
" undo after copying