The VIM global command

The vim global command is helpful in many ways this little trick with the global command uses it to do work (here sort) on a block of text.

Let us say we want to sort all of the hashes we have in a file

x = {
   'a' => 'x',
   'd' => 'x',
   'c' => 'x',
   'b' => 'x',
}

y = {
   'b' => 'x',
   'a' => 'x',
   'c' => 'x',
   'd' => 'x',
}

if we run the ex command :g/{/.+1,/}/-1 sort we will end up with:

x = {
   'a' => 'x',
   'b' => 'x',
   'c' => 'x',
   'd' => 'x',
}

y = {
   'a' => 'x',
   'b' => 'x',
   'c' => 'x',
   'd' => 'x',
}

What this command does is search for all lines that match '/{/' in the file. Then on each of those lines it runs the ex commenad: :.+1,/}/-1 sort. which sorts from the current line +1 to the line before the next closing brace.