One small issue I’ve encountered lately is being able to quickly and automatically convert text from one structured form to another.

My go-to tool for this has been macros, but regex capture groups should work just as well.

Problem Statement#

The example for this post will be converting (parts of) a Poetry-style pyproject.toml to a PEP621 style one, specifically, the dependency declarations.

Transform this:

# Original
[tool.poetry.dependencies]
"discord.py" = "^2.4.0"
prettytable = "^3.10.2"
fuzzywuzzy = {extras = ["speedup"], version = "^0.18.0"}
requests = "^2.32.3"
cashews = "^6.2.0"
gql = {extras = ["aiohttp"], version = "^3.4.1"}

Into this:

# New
dependencies = [
    "discord.py>=2.4.0",
    "prettytable>=3.10.2",
    "fuzzywuzzy[speedup]>=0.18.0",
    "requests>=2.32.3",
    "cashews>=6.2.0",
    "gql[aiohttp]>=3.4.1",
]

Regex Capture Groups 101#

Capture groups allow you to store matched sections of the input string and use them elsewhere, in our case, as part of a replacement over the matched string.

There are two types of capture groups, named and unnamed, however Vim only implements unnamed capture groups.

Note: Unnamed capture groups are indexed starting at 1.

Example 1#

Step 0#

Starting:

# Original
[tool.poetry.dependencies]
"discord.py" = "^2.4.0"
prettytable = "^3.10.2"
fuzzywuzzy = {extras = ["speedup"], version = "^0.18.0"}
requests = "^2.32.3"
cashews = "^6.2.0"
gql = {extras = ["aiohttp"], version = "^3.4.1"}

Step 1#

Normalize the data:

• Remove the TOML table header
• Move fuzzywuzzy to the bottom.
• Remove the quotes around "discord.py"

discord.py = "^2.4.0"
prettytable = "^3.10.2"
requests = "^2.32.3"
cashews = "^6.2.0"
gql = {extras = ["aiohttp"], version = "^3.4.1"}
fuzzywuzzy = {extras = ["speedup"], version = "^0.18.0"}

Step 2#

Convert the top four:

• Highlight the lines
• :'<,'>s/\(.*\) = "^\(\d*\.\d*\.\d*\)"/"\1>=\2",
  • :'<,'>s/ - Search and replace over visual selection.
  • \(.*\) = "^\(\d*\.\d*\.\d*\)"/ - Captures the dependency name in group 1, and version in group 2.
  • "\1>=\2", - Replaces matched string using capture groups.

Note: ":p pastes the contents of register :, which contains the last run command. Or use q: to open a buffer with all previous commands and yank from there.

"discord.py>=2.4.0",
"prettytable>=3.10.2",
"requests>=2.32.3",
"cashews>=6.2.0",
gql = {extras = ["aiohttp"], version = "^3.4.1"}
fuzzywuzzy = {extras = ["speedup"], version = "^0.18.0"}

Step 3#

Convert the bottom two:

• Highlight the lines
• :'<,'>s/\(\w*\).*\["\(\w*\).*^\(\d*\.\d*\.\d*\)"}/"\1[\2]>=\3",
  • \(\w*\).*\["\(\w*\).*^\(\d*\.\d*\.\d*\)"}/ - Captures
    • \(\w*\) - Capture the dependency.
    • .*\["\(\w*\) - Eat everything up to the next [, then capture the extra.
    • .*^\(\d*\.\d*\.\d*\)"} - Eat up to the ^, then capture the version.
  • "\1[\2]>=\3", - Replaces, using capture groups.

Note: This assumes that there is only one extra per dependency.

"discord.py>=2.4.0",
"prettytable>=3.10.2",
"requests>=2.32.3",
"cashews>=6.2.0",
"gql[aiohttp]>=3.4.1",
"fuzzywuzzy[speedup]>=0.18.0",

Step 4#

Sort & add brackets:

• Highlight all the dependencies.
• :'<,'>!sort
• Surround with dependencies = [ and ]

dependencies = [
    "cashews>=6.2.0",
    "discord.py>=2.4.0",
    "fuzzywuzzy[speedup]>=0.18.0",
    "gql[aiohttp]>=3.4.1",
    "prettytable>=3.10.2",
    "requests>=2.32.3",
]