Background: JEdit (and some other text editors as well) support a feature called Multiple simultaneous text insertion points. (at least that\'s what I\'m callin
The vim way to do this is the . command which repeats the last change. So, for instance, if I change a pointer to a reference and I have a bunch of obj->func that I want to change to obj.func then I search for obj->, do 2cw to change the obj-> to obj., then do n.n.n. until all the instances are changed.
Perhaps not a flexible as what you're talking about, but it works frequently and is very intuitive and fast when it does.