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Substitute URLs and text during commands

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Dahan Gong edited this page Oct 1, 2021 · 3 revisions

Vimium C has an advanced option named Auto substitution of various text. It defines rules to match text fragments in URLs and normal text, and magically replace them with different text (and even increased/decreased numbers).

Substitution rule sytnax

Every line means a substitution rule, if only it starts with A-Z, a-z or non-ASCII characters. A basic pattern is just like the s command in sed scripts: keys/regexp/replacement/flags[,actions...].

  • a keys prefix includes 1~6 characters of a-z (ignoring cases) and non-ASCII letters, and it means 1~6 aliases of a rule. A special rule is, an s character means both c and p
    • since v1.93, keys may includes 0-9 and _
    • some commands of Vimium C will only use a-z as its default sed keys, so all others are customizable
  • the / character may be uniformly replaced by any other single ASCII character which doesn't match /[\x00-\x20A-Za-z\x7f]/. And, just like / in sed scripts, the / character (or whatever other character is used in its stead) can appear in the regexp or replacement only if it is preceded by a \ character. For example, you may use @, =, and ~
  • the regexp section (along with the flags section) is used to construct a JavaScript RegExp (valid on your browser)
  • the replacement is used as the newSubstr parameter during replacement, just like https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/String/replace#specifying_a_string_as_a_parameter
  • the actions can be omitted, and it's a list of Vimium C's substitution conditions and actions joined by ,

Substitution conditions and actions

Here're some valid actions (ignoring cases):

  • host=<exclusion-pattern> can be used to filter prefix of an input URL (text). If a host does not match, then it will be skipped even if its aliases match.
  • matched means to return its instantiated replacement, a first capture group, or whole matched string, instead of replacing result, as the input of (other) actions. This is an unique action. Since v1.92.1, the =<pattern> part is case-sensitive. This is an unique action.
  • base64 (aka atob) and base64-encode (aka btoa) are used as atob() and btoa() in JavaScript
  • decode and decode-comp are used as URL decoding and URL component decoding
  • encode and encode-comp encode characters which are neither Unicode letters nor numbers
  • encode-all and encode-all-comp encode characters which are neither Unicode letters nor numbers
  • unescape decodes \x**, \u****, \t, \n and \r
  • lower, upper and normalize converts text using String.toLocaleLowerCase, toLocaleUpperCase and normalize
  • capitalize, capitalize-all, camel and hyper means to convert some words to a different style
  • reverse can reverse all characters in text (supporting surrogate pairs like emoji)
  • return (only since v1.92.1) means to ignore any further rules and return at once

Most actions work after replacing and in the order of definitions, while only host and matched take effects before or when <regexp> works,

Actions names also support camel mode, like encodeAll.

Substitution examples

u@/wiki/?$@@g,host=github.com
# will make `goUp` skip home page of a Wiki.

r@^https://github\.com/[^\s\/?#]+/[^\s\/?#]+(?=/)@@,matched,return
# will make `goToRoot` stop at project home, if only current tab is a child page, like an issue.

Refer to rules

A key mapping line may refer to some substitution rules using an option named sedKeys, and it should be a string including a list of aliases. Vimium C executes rules following the order of their definitions.

A key mapping may also use sed=<substitution-rule> to define and use temporary rules. In this situation, keys prefixes will be ignored, and different rules should be joined using (<space>).

Some commands have default sedKey:

  • when copying text, use c; while use p during pasting from clipboard
  • goNext and goPrevious use n
  • goUp use g to modify (correct) upper URLs
  • goToRoot use r to modify source URLs, and if a different URL is returned, then use it directly
  • when selected text or link title is used as URL and opened, use t
  • when on Vomnibar input query is opened (no suggestion is selected), use o
  • when opening image on Vimium C Display, image URL will be converted using i

Construct URL using current URL

Commands like openUrl and createTab can create new URLs using information of a current tab, like URL, host, title and even tabId.

To do this, openUrl needs both url and url_mask options:

  • url means a URL template
  • url_mask, host_mask, title_mask and tabId_mask point out how to fill the template
  • if a mask doesn't have a value, then it will become an empty string
  • url_mask must exist and be a string. If it's not needed, please make it an empty string using url_mask=
  • if url_mask is %s or $s, then it will be replaced by an encoded URL; otherwise, by a raw URL
  • tab title will always be encoded

For example,

map xxx openUrl url="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:$s" url_mask="$s"

will open a cached version (on Google's server) of a current tab (in a new tab, by default).

Go next to another number

goNext and goPrevious support further substitution to increase / decrease numbers in URLs.

They find ${N/[start]:[end]:[step]} sections in result text of Auto substitution of various text, increase (or decrease) N by step, and use result numbers to construct a new URL.

  • N means old page number in a URL
  • [start]:[end]:[step] is just a similar syntax in Python, and can be used to limit result number
    • start and end should be non-negative integers, while step can also be a negative integer
  • ${ prefix and } are used to recognize number sections to update
  • / can be replaced with ,, # and @

For example, when with a rule in Auto substitution of various text of:

n@tid=(\d+)@tid=$${$1/::2}@

"tid=123" in a source URL will:

  • become "tid=${123/::2}" (note "$$" in <replacement> means a single "$" character)
  • then goNext calculates max(0, min(123 + 2, +Infinity)) and gets 125
  • become "tid=125"

Copy information of tabs

copyWindowInfo supports customizable formats for copied text. Its format parameter means how to format information of a tab, and join parameter will join strings of tabs by given string, using \n or in JSON.

By default, format is ${title}: ${url}, and you may use other fields in the Tab class. URLs are encoded, unless copyWindowInfo has another parameter of decoded (aka decoded=true).

When join is not defined, false or true, strings are joined using \n, and appended with a tail \n when join is not false. When it's json (or json*** since v1.92.1), strings are converted into an JSON array. When it's other string, it will be used as the separator.

There's also a string parameter named type to specify where to copy information:

  • window, its default value, means all tabs in a current window
  • browser means tabs in all windows which have a same incognito state with a current window
  • tab works with the command's count prefix, to select some tabs
  • url and title means only URL or title of a current tab, so format and join will be ignored
  • frame means URL of an active iframe in a current tab

Since v1.92.1, copyWindowInfo supports a string parameter named filter, some words joined by , or (<space>), to filter tabs by URL parts or titles:

  • one word can be url, urlWithHash, host, to decide what URL part to use
  • the other word can be title, and if it exists, also filter by tab titles
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