Dtyjlui

Emacs 26.1

I have this text:

"ADA-SGD"

"ADT-SGD"

"ADX-SGD"

"AID-SGD"

"AMP-SGD"

"ANT-SGD"

"ARDR-SGD"

"ARK-SGD"

I want to swap text in all these lines. The result must be like this:

"SGD-ADA"

"SGD-ADT"

"SGD-ADX"

"SGD-AID"

"SGD-AMP"

"SGD-ANT"

"SGD-ARDR"

"SGD-ARK"

How I can do this?

Thanks.

Another option: using Multiple Cursors you can do it with three commands!

Starting with point (the cursor) on the first hyphen -:

1. Mark the hyphen with Shift right-arrow or C-space C-f
   


2. Mark all hyphens with M-x mc/mark-all-like-this or C-c C-<
   


3. Transpose words with M-x transpose-words or M-t
   

You can do it with C-M-% (running query-replace-regexp): Give it the string "([A-Z]+)-([A-Z]+)" (quotes included) for the text to replace, and "2-1" for the replacement.

I personally think the query-replace-regexp solution is better, but just for fun here is another solution with macros:

;; Move cursor to start of first line

<f3>      ;; kmacro-start-macro-or-insert-counter

M-f       ;; forward-word

M-t       ;; transpose-words

C-n       ;; next-line

C-a       ;; move-beginning-of-line

<f4>      ;; kmacro-end-or-call-macro

;; Select remaining lines

C-x C-k r ;; apply-macro-to-region-lines

You can simply use query-replace-regexp (default key C-M-%) for this.
search pattern would be something like

"(.*)-(SGD)"

and the replacement would look like this then

"2-1"

replace-regexp is great for such things, check the emacs wiki for mor information about that
emacs regexp

Regexps are an overkill in this case since emacs has a built-in command transpose-words that is bound to M-t by default. This command, combined with isearch are enough to solve the problem when linked together with emacs keyboard macros.

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Basic-Keyboard-Macro.html

Learn to use keyboard macros and you can solve most repetative text editing tasks.

Place the cursor before the first line, start recording the keyboard macro, press C-s and - to move the cursor to the next hyphen, press M-t to transpose the words, stop recording. Then repeat the macro as many times as needed. Alternatively, you can apply the macro to a region of lines.