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Enter command window

q:

From in here, you can:

• edit previous commands
• hit <CR> to run a command
• hit <C-c> to close the command window
• yank commands, then:
  • :@"<CR> to run them; or
  • write them to a file and source it (eg. with :source <file>)

Registers

• ": holds last command (paste it with ":p, run it with @:)
• "/ holds last search (paste it with "/p)

Example use case

In updating to Rails 4 I found my custom routing matcher was broken, and that the one provided with RSpec had come up to feature parity. Getting everything ported would require editing hundreds of lines of files.

I edited one file manual, trying out each of the different substitutions I would need to do. Then I pulled up the command window (q:) and extracted the commands into a file which I could then :source:

%s/@//gce
%s/\v\{ (.+).should \=\= (['"].+['"]) \}/{ expect(\1).to eq(\2) }/gce
%s/\v(:)@<!:([a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z_0-9]*)(\s*)\=\>\s?/\2:\3/gce
%s/should_not be_recognized/to_not be_routable/gce
%s/\v(put|get|delete|post)\(/expect(\1: /gce
%s/\vshould (have_routing|map_to)/to route_to/gce

This drops some unnecessary instance variables (which I manually replace with let declarations), switches from the deprecated should to the "new" (circa 2012) expect syntax, changes Ruby 1.8 Hash syntax to 1.9+ syntax, and swaps out my custom matcher for the equivalent calls to the built in RSpec matchers.

With this, I was able to edit each routing spec file (on average 50-100 lines each) in about 10 seconds per file, which made a potentially very tedious task a breeze. Here’s a diff for one of the files to give a sense of what was involved:

diff --git a/spec/routing/posts_routing_spec.rb b/spec/routing/posts_routing_spec.rb
index 1882cf6..8b78443 100644
--- a/spec/routing/posts_routing_spec.rb
+++ b/spec/routing/posts_routing_spec.rb
@@ -2,72 +2,72 @@ require 'spec_helper'

 describe PostsController do
   describe 'routing' do
-    specify { get('/blog').should have_routing('posts#index') }
-    specify { get('/blog/new').should have_routing('posts#new') }
-    specify { get('/blog/synergy-5.0-released').should have_routing('posts#show', :id => 'synergy-5.0-released') }
-    specify { get('/blog/synergy-5.0-released/edit').should have_routing('posts#edit', :id => 'synergy-5.0-released') }
-    specify { put('/blog/synergy-5.0-released').should have_routing('posts#update', :id => 'synergy-5.0-released') }
-    specify { delete('/blog/synergy-5.0-released').should have_routing('posts#destroy', :id => 'synergy-5.0-released') }
-    specify { post('/blog').should have_routing('posts#create') }
+    specify { expect(get: '/blog').to route_to('posts#index') }
+    specify { expect(get: '/blog/new').to route_to('posts#new') }
+    specify { expect(get: '/blog/synergy-5.0-released').to route_to('posts#show', id: 'synergy-5.0-released') }
+    specify { expect(get: '/blog/synergy-5.0-released/edit').to route_to('posts#edit', id: 'synergy-5.0-released') }
+    specify { expect(put: '/blog/synergy-5.0-released').to route_to('posts#update', id: 'synergy-5.0-released') }
+    specify { expect(delete: '/blog/synergy-5.0-released').to route_to('posts#destroy', id: 'synergy-5.0-released') }
+    specify { expect(post: '/blog').to route_to('posts#create') }

     describe 'index pagination' do
-      specify { get('/blog/page/2').should map_to('posts#index', :page => '2') }
+      specify { expect(get: '/blog/page/2').to route_to('posts#index', page: '2') }

       # note how we can still have an post titled "Page"
-      specify { get('/blog/page').should have_routing('posts#show', :id => 'page') }
+      specify { expect(get: '/blog/page').to route_to('posts#show', id: 'page') }

       it 'rejects non-numeric :page params' do
-        get('/blog/page/foo').should_not be_recognized
+        expect(get: '/blog/page/foo').to_not be_routable
       end
     end

     describe 'comments' do
       # only [/tags/new #new], [/tags/create #create] and [/tags/update #update] are implemented while nested
-      specify { get('/blog/synergy-5.0-released/comments/new').should have_routing('comments#new', :post_id => 'synergy-5.0-released') }
-      specify { post('/blog/synergy-5.0-released/comments').should have_routing('comments#create', :post_id => 'synergy-5.0-released') }
-      specify { put('/blog/synergy-5.0-released/comments/123').should have_routing('comments#update', :post_id => 'synergy-5.0-released', :id => '123') }
+      specify { expect(get: '/blog/synergy-5.0-released/comments/new').to route_to('comments#new', post_id: 'synergy-5.0-released') }
+      specify { expect(post: '/blog/synergy-5.0-released/comments').to route_to('comments#create', post_id: 'synergy-5.0-released') }
+      specify { expect(put: '/blog/synergy-5.0-released/comments/123').to route_to('comments#update', post_id: 'synergy-5.0-released', id: '123') }

       # all other RESTful actions are no-ops
-      specify { get('/blog/synergy-5.0-released/comments').should_not be_recognized }
-      specify { get('/blog/synergy-5.0-released/comments/456').should_not be_recognized }
-      specify { get('/blog/synergy-5.0-released/comments/456/edit').should_not be_recognized }
-      specify { delete('/blog/synergy-5.0-released/comments/456').should_not be_recognized }
+      specify { expect(get: '/blog/synergy-5.0-released/comments').to_not be_routable }
+      specify { expect(get: '/blog/synergy-5.0-released/comments/456').to_not be_routable }
+      specify { expect(get: '/blog/synergy-5.0-released/comments/456/edit').to_not be_routable }
+      specify { expect(delete: '/blog/synergy-5.0-released/comments/456').to_not be_routable }
     end

     describe 'regressions' do
       it 'handles trailing slashes on resources declared using ":as"' do
         # bug appeared in Rails 2.3.0 RC1; see:
         #   http://rails.lighthouseapp.com/projects/8994/tickets/2039
-        get('/blog/').should map_to('posts#index')
+        expect(get: '/blog/').to route_to('posts#index')
       end

       it 'handles comment creation on posts with periods in the title' do
         # see: https://wincent.dev/issues/1410
-        post('/blog/foo.bar/comments').should map_to('comments#create', :post_id => 'foo.bar')
+        expect(post: '/blog/foo.bar/comments').to route_to('comments#create', post_id: 'foo.bar')
       end
     end

     describe 'helpers' do
-      before do
+      let(:post) do
         # we use an post with a "tricky" id (containing a period, which is
         # usually a format separator) to test the routes
-        @post = Post.stub :permalink => 'synergy-5.0-released'
+        Post.stub permalink: 'synergy-5.0-released'
       end

       describe 'posts_path' do
-        specify { posts_path.should == '/blog' }
+        specify { expect(posts_path).to eq('/blog') }
       end

       describe 'new_post_path' do
-        specify { new_post_path.should == '/blog/new' }
+        specify { expect(new_post_path).to eq('/blog/new') }
       end

       describe 'post_path' do
-        specify { post_path(@post).should == '/blog/synergy-5.0-released' }
+        specify { expect(post_path(post)).to eq('/blog/synergy-5.0-released') }
       end

       describe 'edit_post_path' do
-        specify { edit_post_path(@post).should == '/blog/synergy-5.0-released/edit' }
+        specify { expect(edit_post_path(post)).to eq('/blog/synergy-5.0-released/edit') }
       end
     end
   end