Re: multi line regex's in vi ...

[younie@home.com (Rick Younie)]

In article <[🔎] Pine.LNX.4.21.0004261043040.1058-100000@heyzeus.alaska.net> you wrote:
> is there a way to match a pattern over more then one line in vi (i normally
> use vim)?
> 
> i'm html formatting text documents and what i'd like to do is replace
> something like the below paragraphs:
> ______________________________________________________________________
> 
> the first line of text, this is really boring, blah lah blh why do i
> care.  html formatting text is really boring and vi saves me.
> 
> the is a second line of text.
> ______________________________________________________________________
> 
> with something like this
> 
> ______________________________________________________________________
> 
> <p> the first line of text, this is really boring, blah lah blh why do i
> care.  html formatting text is really boring and vi saves me.
> 
> <p> the is a second line of text.
> ______________________________________________________________________

So add <p> to any non-blank line?  I'd like to know a one-liner for
this too.  You've got blank line with ^$ but how do you negate that?

A two-liner is
%s/^/<p>/   - add <p> to the start of each line
%s/^<p>$//  - remove any lines that contain only <p>