Function to find all matches in a string?

[Tim Chase]

I was looking for something similar to Python's re.findall()/finditer()
function to answer a question on Reddit[1] but was surprised I
couldn't find anything in

:help function-list

The general intent would be to take an input string and return a
List containing all the sub-strings matching a pattern like

let matches=findall('amwenxipyuqz', '[aeiou]')

would set matches to

['aw', 'en', 'ip', 'uq']

I was able to cobble together a hack-job in this case, but I'd hoped
to be able to do something like

:let a=[] | g/#\w\+/call extend(a, findall(getline('.'), @/))

Does such a function exist and I just missed it?

Thanks!

-tim

[1]
https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/18pcd84/the_vim_way/kenedxq/

[aro...@vex.net]

> I was looking for something similar to Python's re.findall()/finditer()
> function to answer a question on Reddit[1] but was surprised I
> couldn't find anything in
>

Are you using Linux, MacOS ,or Windows?

[Tim Chase]

In this case, it was FreeBSD (and I'm uncertain about the author
of the post on Reddit), and there are a bunch of shell-based or
programming-language-based solutions to the particular problem.
My question was more about the (non-)existence of an internal

func(str, regex) -> List of matches

type function.

-tim

[Yegappan Lakshmanan]

Hi Tim,

On Sat, Dec 23, 2023 at 2:35 PM Tim Chase <v...@tim.thechases.com> wrote:

I was looking for something similar to Python's re.findall()/finditer()
function to answer a question on Reddit[1] but was surprised I
couldn't find anything in

  :help function-list

The general intent would be to take an input string and return a
List containing all the sub-strings matching a pattern like

  let matches=findall('amwenxipyuqz', '[aeiou]')

would set matches to

  ['aw', 'en', 'ip', 'uq']

I was able to cobble together a hack-job in this case, but I'd hoped
to be able to do something like

  :let a=[] | g/#\w\+/call extend(a, findall(getline('.'), @/))

Does such a function exist and I just missed it?

Currently no such function exists.  I have created PR https://github.com/vim/vim/pull/13766

to add support for the matchall() function.  Can you try that out?

Thanks,

Yegappan

[Arun]

I think substitute() is the closest, perhaps you can use submatch() for appending to the list. Something like this in mind:

  :let a=[] | g/#\w\+/call substitute(getline('.'), @/, '\=extend(a, [submatch(0)])', 'g')

Regards,

-Arun

[Arun]

On Saturday, December 23, 2023 at 2:35:52 PM UTC-8 Tim Chase wrote:

[Retrying.. as my first attempt to post did not seem to go anywhere. Apologies if this is a repeat]

It looks like substitute() is the closest to what you want to achieve. Perhaps you can add submatch() to get the result appended to the list. Something like this in mind:

   :let a=[]|g/#\w\+/call substitute(getline('.'), @/, '\=extend(a, [submatch(0)])', 'g')

Regards,

-Arun