Substitute a regular expression by text in between the regular expression

Question

Suppose I want to change

\hl{abc}
\{}
{
}
\hl{12}

to

abc
\{}
}
{
12

i.e. I want to remove \hl{ and } from around what's inside them. How can I do this in vim? I was considering :s/\\hl{.*}//g but that also takes away the text in between.

Answer 1

You can use \(…\) (see :help /\() to capture the text in between, and use \1 (see :help s/\1) to make use of it in the substitution: :s/\\hl{\(.*\)}/\1/g.