sorry if this isn't exactly a programming question.
I mainly use Vim to edit my programs. So my question to all the Vim experts out there is:
is there a way to select and scroll in Vim? I want to copy a bunch of code, and in the pass I have always copied everything I can view on the vim screen then paste it to where-ever, then scroll down then copy and paste..repeat..until done. Is there a way I can efficiently copy a large block of code?
Formatting lines of code- you know when you copy and paste some code sometime 10 lines of code turn into 30 really messy lines of code? well, is there a command to reformat the code? In the pass I manually go back and properly indent everything which sometime is super repetitive when you got 500 lines. I saw on other sites something about the command being 1G = G can someone confirm that? when I try it in my command line, I get a error E464: ambiguous use of user-command line which I have no idea what that even means.
I do know there is a help command in Vim,but I have no idea where to even start when there is something like 200 txt files and frankly this is faster :)
Your questions are around basic use of vi / Vim. Do yourself a favor and go through a Vim tutorial; you'll find many on the web, and Vim comes with it's own introduction, vimtutor.
On Unix, if Vim has been properly installed, you can start it from the shell:
vimtutor
On MS-Windows you can find it in the Program/Vim menu. Or execute
vimtutor.bat in the $VIMRUNTIME directory.
Also, learn how to look up commands and navigate the built-in :help; it is comprehensive and offers many tips. You won't learn Vim as fast as other editors, but if you commit to continuous learning, it'll prove a very powerful and efficient editor.
The vim way is to entirely forget selection using the mouse for more than a screenful, but to set a mark, move to the other end of the desired text, then yank to mark:
Set mark m at beginning of text with mm
Move to end of text
Yank to mark with y'm
Paste with P or p
This whole answer is only helpful if you can use register + as clipboard. Try "+yy in VIM, try to paste it in another application to see if you can use the clipboard, if you can:
You should really read the manuals and other help:
To yank lines (simple) : http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Moving_lines_up_or_down
To address lines: Addressing in VIM
That is to start with.
Some examples of what you can do:
:.,+50y a yank 50 lines from current and 50 ahead to register a, use A instead to append to register A.
:.,/some pattern/y A yank (append) from current to first line that match /some pattern/ to register a.
"Ay/some pattern<CR> will do the same thing.
Once you learn how you should address, it's easy to combine commands with addressing, e.g. the "indenting command" =:
=} auto indent to the end of current paragraph
=/some pattern<CR> auto indent to line matching /some pattern/
Mark something in Visual mode and type = it will auto indent the selected text.
And so on... So read manuals, you will have a great use of it.
In the above examples you can use register + to "yank" to the clipboard instead of register a.
I may have a unique situation here. I want gVim (gui version, in Linux) to keep concealed characters concealed no matter what, even when the cursor is on that line or that character gets selected. (It should be as close to if the characters never existed as possible.) Currently the concealed characters show themselves when the cursor enters that line, which causes text to jump around when scrolling and when selecting text.
We are using gView (read-only gVim) to view logs, so as to take advantage of its robust syntax highlighting. Problem is, these logs contain lots of escape characters and TTY color codes, that make reading difficult. (^[33mSomeText^[0m)
I'm using this line to hide them:
syntax match Ignore /\%o33\[[0-9]\{0,5}m/ conceal
Since the files are viewed by non-vim-experts, it looks glitchy and broken when the text un-conceals itself. (And also looks glitchy and broken if the color codes are present, and also looks glitchy and broken if the color codes are blacked-out to become invisible, but still show when selected and appear after copy/paste.)
This should be fine because these files are opened read-only in gview, with an extra set nomodifiable making it even more difficult to save the file. While it's possible to edit and attempt to save the logs, doing so is considered both an invalid thing to do, and a harmless thing to do, and requires enough Vim skills that if someone manages to edit a file they know what they're doing. The problem with being able to edit a line with concealed text does not apply.
If 'conceal' can't be configured to keep hidden text hidden no matter what, an acceptable alternative would be to replace the TTY color codes with whitespace when the file gets opened. But, this has to be done in read-only mode, and we can't have gview throwing up a save dialog on closing the window because the file has been modified by its .vimrc.
Note: I am in full control of the .vim script file sourced when these are read, but cannot control the existence of the TTY color codes or the code that opens the log files in gview. (i.e. I can't pass it through sed or anything like that.) The ideal solution is anything that can transparently nuke the color codes from within a .vimrc, but I'll hear any suggestions. The 'conceal' feature is just my most promising lead.
So, any ideas how to permanently get rid of these on file view without dialogs popping up on close?
:help conceal
When the "conceal" argument is given, the item is marked as concealable.
Whether or not it is actually concealed depends on the value of the
'conceallevel' option. The 'concealcursor' option is used to decide whether
concealable items in the current line are displayed unconcealed to be able to
edit the line.
:help concealcursor
Sets the modes in which text in the cursor line can also be concealed.
When the current mode is listed then concealing happens just like in
other lines.
n Normal mode
v Visual mode
i Insert mode
c Command line editing, for 'incsearch'
'v' applies to all lines in the Visual area, not only the cursor.
A useful value is "nc". This is used in help files. So long as you
are moving around text is concealed, but when starting to insert text
or selecting a Visual area the concealed text is displayed, so that
you can see what you are doing.
Keep in mind that the cursor position is not always where it's
displayed. E.g., when moving vertically it may change column.
Also, :help conceallevel
Determine how text with the "conceal" syntax attribute |:syn-conceal|
is shown:
Value Effect ~
0 Text is shown normally
1 Each block of concealed text is replaced with one
character. If the syntax item does not have a custom
replacement character defined (see |:syn-cchar|) the
character defined in 'listchars' is used (default is a
space).
It is highlighted with the "Conceal" highlight group.
2 Concealed text is completely hidden unless it has a
custom replacement character defined (see
|:syn-cchar|).
3 Concealed text is completely hidden.
Only one command is needed: set concealcursor=n
I might have a better idea—you can pass it through sed (using %!sed) or really do a bunch of other :substitute commands—whatever edits you need to get rid of the color codes.
When you’re done, make sure to set nomodified—this forces vim to think there haven’t been any changes!
I have started working on a huge PHP application that has thousands of lines of code in each file, with lots of huge if blocks, classes, and functions all existing in the same file. I'm not the only dev working on it, so I cannot refactor!
I have tried using the Tags List plugin but it does not really help. Is there any way to have VIM respect only a particular code block, and ignore the rest of the file? I am hoping for some or all of these features:
Enable line numbering only for the current code block, starting from 1 at the line containing the opening {, and showing no numbering for lines preceding it or after the closing }.
Searching with / would be restricted only to the block in question.
I am thinking along the lines of selecting the current block and editing it in a new buffer when enabling the mode, then replacing the existing block with the edited block when exiting the mode. However, I am having trouble actually implementing this feature. My current version is this:
map <F7> <Esc>mO<C-V>aBy:new<Return>p:set nu<Return>:set ft=php<Return>ggi<?php<Return><Esc>
map <F8> <Esc>ggdd<C-V>aBx:bp<Return>`O<C-V>aBp
However, this has several issues, such as the inability to perform incremental saves.
I would be very surprised if Vim allows the kind of line numbering you ask for.
This plugin (and 1 or 2 similar ones IIRC) allows you to visually select a region of your current file, work on it in another buffer and put everything back in its place in the original file on :w.
Even if it's not the solution you are wanting, I think the following can help you to solve your problem.
You can use phpfolding plugin, which folds by PHP syntax (functions, classes, methods, PhpDoc...)
You can then select a fold by pressing v$ over the closed fold and execute whatever you want with :whatever. For example, :s/this/self/g to substitute all this for self in the fold. When you press :, vim will automatically add '<,'> to denote following command it's only for the visually selected text.
I have this dataset in a csv file
1.33570301776, 3.61194e-06, 7.24503e-06, -9.91572e-06, 1.25098e-05, 0.0102828, 0.010352, 0.0102677, 0.0103789, 0.00161604, 0.00167978, 0.00159998, 0.00182596, 0.0019804, 0.0133687, 0.010329, 0.00163437, 0.00191202, 0.0134425
1.34538754675, 3.3689e-06, 9.86066e-06, -9.12075e-06, 1.18058e-05, 0.00334344, 0.00342207, 0.00332897, 0.00345504, 0.00165532, 0.00170412, 0.00164234, 0.00441903, 0.00459294, 0.00449357, 0.00339737, 0.00166596, 0.00451926, 0.00455153
1.34808186291, -1.99011e-06, 6.53026e-06, -1.18909e-05, 9.52337e-06, 0.00158065, 0.00166529, 0.0015657, 0.0017022, 0.000740644, 0.00078635, 0.000730052, 0.00219736, 0.00238191, 0.00212762, 0.00163783, 0.000750669, 0.00230171, 0.00217917
As you can see, the numbers are formatted differently and misaligned. Is there a way in vim to quickly align the columns properly, so that the result is this
1.33570301776, 3.61194e-06, 7.24503e-06, -9.91572e-06, 1.25098e-05, 0.0102828, 0.010352, 0.0102677, 0.0103789, 0.00161604, 0.00167978, 0.00159998, 0.00182596, 0.0019804, 0.0133687, 0.010329, 0.00163437, 0.00191202, 0.0134425
1.34538754675, 3.3689e-06, 9.86066e-06, -9.12075e-06, 1.18058e-05, 0.00334344, 0.00342207, 0.00332897, 0.00345504,0.00165532, 0.00170412, 0.00164234, 0.00441903, 0.00459294, 0.00449357, 0.00339737, 0.00166596, 0.00451926, 0.00455153
1.34808186291, -1.99011e-06, 6.53026e-06, -1.18909e-05, 9.52337e-06, 0.00158065, 0.00166529, 0.0015657, 0.0017022, 0.000740644,0.00078635, 0.000730052,0.00219736, 0.00238191, 0.00212762, 0.00163783, 0.000750669,0.00230171, 0.00217917
That would be great to copy and paste sections with ctrl-v. Any hints?
If you're on some kind of UNIX (Linux, etc), you can cheat and filter it through the column(1) command.
:%!column -t
The above will parse on delimiters inside string literals which is wrong, so you will likely need pre-processing steps and specifying the delimiter for this file for example:
%!sed 's/","/\&/' | column -t -s '&'
Sometimes we want to align just two columns. In that case, we don't need any plugins and can use pure Vim functionality like this:
Choose a separator. In OP's post this is a comma, in my example this is =.
Add spaces before/after it. I use s/=/= ...spaces... / in visual selection for this.
Locate to the longest word and place cursor after it.
Remove all the extra whitespace using dw and vertical movement.
Example of this technique demonstrated below:
I don't find myself needing to align things often enough to install another plugin, so this was my preferred way of accomplishing it - especially that it doesn't require much thinking.
As sunny256 suggested, the column command is a great way of doing this on Unix/Linux machines, but if you want to do it in pure Vim (so that it can be used in Windows as well), the easiest way is to install the Align plugin and then do:
:%Align ,
:%s/\(\s\+\),\s/,\1/g
The first line aligns the entries on the commas and the second moves the comma so that it's flush with the preceding value. You may be able to use AlignCtrl to define a custom mapping that does the whole lot in one go, but I can never remember how to use it...
Edit
If you don't mind two spaces between entries and you want to do this in one command, you can also do:
:%Align ,\zs
This is a great answer using vim macros: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8363786/59384 - basically, you start recording a macro, format the first column, stop recording then repeat the macro for all remaining lines.
Copy/pasted from that answer:
qa0f:w100i <Esc>19|dwjq4#a
Note the single space after the 100i, and the <Esc> means "press escape"--don't type "<Esc>" literally.
Translation:
qa -- record macro in hotkey a
0 -- go to beginning of line
f: -- go to first : symbol
w -- go to next non-space character after the symbol
100i <Esc> -- insert 100 spaces
19| -- go to 19th column (value 19 figured out manually)
dw -- delete spaces until : symbol
j -- go to next line
q -- stop recording macro
4#a -- run the macro 4 times (for the remaining 4 lines)
We now also have the fabulous EasyAlign plugin, written by junegunn.
Demonstration GIF from its README:
Also, Tabularize is quite good http://vimcasts.org/episodes/aligning-text-with-tabular-vim/
You could use the csv.vim plugin.
:%ArrangeColumn
However, this will not do exactly what you have asked: it will right adjust the contents of cells, whereas you have your values aligned by the decimal point or by the first digit.
The plugin has many other useful commands for working with CSV files.
also if you have very long columns it can be handy to disable default wrapping
:set nowrap
:%!column -t
(note in debian you also have a further option for column -n which if you want to split multiple adjacent delimiters)
Here’s a pure Vim script answer, no plugins, no macros:
It might be most clear to start out with my problem’s solution as an example. I selected the lines of code I wanted to affect, then used the following command (recall that entering command mode from visual mode automatically prepends the “'<,'>”, so it acts on the visual range):
:'<,'>g``normal / "value<0d>D70|P`
Except I did NOT actually type “<0d>”. You can enter unprintable characters on the command line by pressing ctrl-v, then the key you want to type. “<0d>” is what is rendered on the command line after I typed ‘ctrl-v enter’. Here, it’s parsed by the “normal” command as the exit from “/” search mode. The cursor then jumps to “ value” in the current line.
Then we simply [D]elete the rest of the line, jump to column 70 (or whatever you need in your case), and [P]ut what we just deleted. This does mean we have to determine the width of the widest line, up to our search. If you haven’t put that information in your statusline, you can see the column of the cursor by entering the normal mode command ‘g ctrl-g’. Also note that jumping to a column that doesn’t exist requires the setting 'virtualedit'!
I left the search term for the :g(lobal) command empty, since we used a visual block and wanted to affect every line, but you can leave off using a visual selection (and the “'<,'>”) and put a search term there instead. Or combine a visual selection and a search term to narrow things more finely/easily.
Here’s something I learned recently: if you mess up on a complex command mode command, undo with ‘u’ (if it affected the buffer), then press “q:” to enter a special command history buffer that acts much like a conventional buffer. Edit any line and press enter, and the changed command is entered as a new command. Indispensable if you don’t want to have to stress over formulating everything perfectly the first time.
I just wrote tablign for this purpose. Install with
pip3 install tablign --user
Then simply mark the table in vim and do
:'<,'>:!tablign
Pretty old question, but I've recently availed myself of an excellent vim plugin that enables table formatting either on the fly or after-the-fact (as your use case requires):
https://github.com/dhruvasagar/vim-table-mode
I have this in my .vimrc.
command! CSV set nowrap | %s/,/,|/g | %!column -n -t -s "|"
This aligns the columns while keeping the comma, which may be needed later for correct reading. For example, with Python Pandas read_csv(..., skipinitialspace=True), thanks Pandas guys for this smart option, otherwise in vim %s/,\s\+/,/g. It may be easier if your column has the option --output-separator I guess, my doesn't and I'm not sure why (my man page for column says 2004, on ubuntu 18.04, not sure ubuntu will get a new version). Anyway, this works for me, and comment if you have any suggestions.
I made a cli tool written in Perl.
You can find it here: https://github.com/bas080/colcise