Given this line in vim:
The cat is sleepy.
I want to replace "sleepy" by "black" (of course this is for sake of simplicity, i'm actually editing C code)
When cursor is at the beginning of the line, i type "/sle" to make it go to the beginning of "sleepy"
Then v, then e
The word "sleepy" is now fully selected. Then i type ":s/\%V.*\%V/black/"
And instead of having:
The cat is black.
It gives:
The cat is blacky.
The last character visually selected is not considered as part of the selection, or maybe i'm not using \%V correctly.
How can i make pattern matching works in exactly my visual selection ?
You have to add one character after \%V:
/\%V.*\%V.
. If selection contains more then one line you will have to use \%V\_.*\%V\_..
There is also another trick:
/\%V\_.\{-}\%V\@!
(multiline version). This makes use of non-greedy matches and negative look-ahead: first (\{-}) to make sure it operates only on selection, second (\@!, specifically \%V\@!) to make sure there is no visual selection after the last character.
If you have more complex pattern and cannot make it non-greedy or put one character after last \%V there is another solution, which is way to slow though:
/\%V\_.*\%(\%V\_.\)\@<=
(multiline version again). It uses positive look-behind to make sure that last character is still inside visual selection.