vi column replacement 1

[mrrioux]

I have a list of text with which I am trying to replace any entry in the 18 to the 21 position with spaces.

in effect
aabbccddeeffgghhiijjkkll
with
aabbccddeeffgghhi kkll
Does anyone know an easy way to do this?
The 18 to 21 position is varied so a text replacement cannot be done.

Thank you for your time.
Mrr

 

[CaKiwi]

Try

%s/\(.\{17\}\)..../\1 /

Some older versions of vi do not allow the repeat count \{17\} so you may need to replace it with 16 periods. Some newer versions and vi clones don't require you to escape the curly braces e.g. Elvis and Vim.

Hope this helps.

CaKiwi