How to quickly change variable names in Vim?

Question

I am using Vim to read through a lot of C and Perl code containing many single letter variable names.

It would be nice to have some command to change the name of a va

Answer 1

AFAIK, there is no actual refactoring support in VIM. When doing a rename with the intent of a refactor I usually take the following precautions:

1. Limit the scope of the change my using marks.
2. When entering the regex, bracket the name with \< and >. This will make it match an entire word which reduces the types of incorrect renames that will occur.
3. Don't do a multiline replace to reduce chances of a bad replace
4. Look through the code diff carefully if it's anything other than a small change.

My end change looks something like this

:'a,'bs/\<foo\>/bar

I would love to be wrong about there not being a refactoring tool for VIM but I haven't seen it.