simple question in vi editor on unix

how could i add some text like 'ABC' at the beginning of all the lines in vi e开发者_高级运维ditor? this doesnot work!

%s/^/^ABC

i know this command is used for replacing text

%s/vggv/uggv/g

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You want:

:%s/^/ABC/g

That will put ABC in front of every line.

Don't forget the : in front

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I really love the normal command for things like these:

:%normal IABC

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Doesn't :%s/^/ABC/ work for you?

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As others have said, :%s/^/ABC will do the trick. Consider what ^ means. It is a logical construct, not an actual character in the file. Therefore, you're not really replacing it, so you don't have to use ^ABC. In fact, as you've seen, ^ is treated as a string in that context.

If you wanted to skip lines that only contain whitespace, you could use :v/^[:space:]*$/s/^/ABC.

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:%s/^/ABC/g

this will add ABC in front of every line in vi editor