CentOS - Oct 2009 - Slightly OT: Vim command (or macro) to replace space under cursor by "  " (without deleting the following word)

Hi,

I'm using Vim to edit some static XHTML pages.

I have to (manually) check for non-breakable spaces in my text, and 
eventually replace simple spaces by the following character sequence:

      

Usually, when I perform the same operation over and over in a text, I do 
it once, and then repeat it in command mode using [.]. But I can't 
figure out how to do this here.

Here's what the according macro would look like. Pressing F2 would 
replace the space under the cursor by " " :

:map <F2> cw&nbsp;<ESC>

... except this also deletes the word after the cursor, which is annoying.

Any suggestions ?

Cheers,

Niki

On Oct 5, 2009, at 5:34, Niki Kovacs wrote:
> Here's what the according macro would look like. Pressing F2 would
> replace the space under the cursor by " " :
>
> :map <F2> cw&nbsp;<ESC>
>
> ... except this also deletes the word after the cursor, which is  
> annoying.
>
> Any suggestions ?
Have you tried  the "s" command (substitute) instead of
"cw"?

Alfred

Niki Kovacs wrote:
> :map <F2> cw&nbsp;<ESC>
>
> ... except this also deletes the word after the cursor, which is annoying.
>   
    c1l&nbsp;<esc>

thats digit 1, lower case letter L, lower L being the move left 
command.  the 1 is uneeded, but c3l would change 3 characters, etc.

btw, my favorite way of doing what you said would be...

    / <enter>
   c1l&nbsp;

then n to find the next space, and . to execute the change op.   you 
sure don't want to change spaces that are inside < > commands, so a 
global change and replace is not suitable.