How to sort numeric and literal columns in Vim - vim

Using Vim 6.0. Say I'm editing this file:
sdfsdg
dfgdfg
34 12
2 4
45 1
34 5
How do I sort the second column?

If you have decent shell available, select your numbers and run the command
:'<,'>!sort -n -k 2
If you gonna type this in visual mode, after typing the colon, markers '<,'> will appead automatically, and you'll only have to type the rest of it.
This type of commands (:[motion]!) is called filtering. You can learn more by consulting vim's help:
:h filter

Sort all lines on second column N by using Vim sort command, e.g.
:sort /.*\%2v/
Reference: vimtips.txt

For vim7 I would go for:
:sort n /.*\s/
This will sort numbers ignoring text matched by given regexp. In your case it is second column.

Sort by 2nd column by selecting it in visual mode (e.g. Control+v), then run:
!sort
or to sort by third column
sort -k 3
or
:sort /.*\%3v/
Alternatively select the lines you wish to sort using the Shift+V command. Then enter
!sort -k 3n
or use the below code to tell Vim to skip the first two words in every line and sort on whatever follows:
:%sort /^\S\+\s\+\S\+\s\+/
or i.e. sort by 8th line:
:sort /.*\%55v/
The 'virtual' specification is the absolute number of column , which treats spaces + tabs as single character (shortly, it doesn't count tabs as eight spaces),
so to sort by last column:
:%sort /\<\S\+\>$/ r

If more columns were there, you may use repetition to avoid complicated pattern.
For example, this will sort the entire file by the 100th column ("column" here means the space separated column)
:%sort /^\(\S\+\s\+\)\{99}/

Related

How to append each line from 11-20 to each line from 1-10 in VIM

I have a file in which first 10 lines are the columns of a table and the rest 10 lines are the values of each column.
How can I use norm in VIM to append the values after each column names like this:
column1
...
column10
value1
...value10
-->
column1: value1
...
column10: value10
It is a little similar with this(Vim - Copy Nth word of each line, from line 10-100, to end of line), but I don't know how to go to line 1:10 and append the copied lines.
Any idea will be appreciated!
Fairly naive and crude way to do this, but:
:1,10norm! 10j0d$10kA: ^[p
Explanation:
1,10norm!: for lines 1 to 10, do the following (the ! means any custom mapping you have will be ignored, thanks to D. Ben Knoble for reminding of this):
10j: move down 10 lines
0d$: delete the whole line (not including newline)
10k: move back up 10 lines
A:: append (at the end of the line) ': ' (note the trailing space)
^[: input escape character, going back to normal mode. This (^[) is a single character and is inputted by typing Ctrl-v then escape, not by typing ^[.
p: paste the line deleted in step 3
Another (copy-pastable) way, (ab)using the substitute command:
:1,10s/\v(.*)\ze(.*\n){10}(.*)/\1: \3/ | 11,20d
which does:
1,10s/: for lines 1 to 10, execute the following substitution:
\v: use very-magic regex mode (see :help \v)
(.*): capture the entire current line (eg column1)
\ze: signal the end of the match. This way everything read (and captured) afterwards will not be affected (but can still be read)
(.*\n){10}: skip 10 (including current) lines, ie skip selector to 10 lines below
(.*): capture the line (eg value1)
/: end the 'select' part of the substitute command
\1: \3: replace with captured groups (eg column1: value1)
|: command separator
11,20d: delete lines 11 to 20
Use blockwise-visual mode to perform the operations.
You can enter visual block mode with Ctrl-V and it allows you to select and operate on columns. It also allows you to perform the same action on a block, which you can use to add the : to the lines with the column names.
I'll use normal Vim syntax for keystrokes in my examples, <C-v> means Ctrl-V.
Start by deleting the values into the default register, using a visual block:
11G<C-v>9j$d
Then Add the : to the column lines, also using a visual block:
1G<C-v>9j$A: <Esc>
Then add some more spaces to the first line, to ensure there's room for all the column names to fit:
A <Esc>
Finally, put the visual block at the end of the first line:
$p
It will actually put it on all lines all the way to the end.
This is slightly different from what you specified, since the values are all aligned on the same column. If you want different spacing, you can perhaps use a :s operation to fix spacing.
10:s/: */: /<cr>
Depending on where you pasted (if some column names had more trailing spaces than the first one), you might have some trailing spaces after the pasted values to fix as well, but that should be easy to do using a similar procedure.
Visual block operations are really powerful, it's a great feature to learn and keep in your "toolbox" in Vim. They're really handy with this kind of problem where thinking in "columns" makes the most sense.

How to complete the whole list with Vim?

I have a list of products to place on a rails seed and I would like to instead of put brackets one by one on the list with a command place the brackets on the whole list?
for example:
1. Dakine
2. Dale of Norway
3. Dan Post
1. ["Dakine"],
2. ["Dale of Norway"],
3. ["Dan Post"],
I searched on the help but did not find any about. Thanks.
You can record a macro in Vim and repeat that.
If you are on number 1, you can do following:
qqf a["Esc$a"],Esc0jq
Explanation:
qq: Start recording macro in register q
f: Go to first space character
a: : Insert after (the space character from above)
\[": Insert those characters
Esc: Back to normal mode
$: Go to end of line
a: Insert after (end of line)
"],: Insert the characters
Esc: Back to normal mode
0: Jump to start of line
j: Go down one line
If you have 100 such lines, you can do 100#q to achieve your result.
With vim substitute command:
:%s/.*/["&"]/
If you don't want to operate on all lines, then select the ones you want to transform or note the related line numbers, and then type :s/..... without the %. You'll see actually :'<,'>s this range represent the visually selected lines, and vim adds it automatically in visual mode.
On Atom you can enable the find to use Regex in the search(there is a button next to the search field)
Then you can search for something like (^.*$) to get every line separated by groups and in the Replace field you use ["$1"],. The $1 represents the value matched by the Regex.
Then just do a Replace All and remove the last comma in your list if needed.

Allign the words to the specified column in vim using commands

How I can move or shift the words in the entire file to the specified column?
For example like below:
Before :
123 ABC
112 XYZS
15925 asdf
1111 25asd
1 qwer
After :
123 ABC
112 XYZS
15925 asdf
1111 25asd
1 qwer
How it can be done using command mode?
Here the thing is we need to shift the 2nd word to the specified column
Here the specified column is 8
except for vim-plugins mentioned by others, if you were working on a linux box with column command available, you could just :
%!column -t
% could be vim ranges, e.g. visual selections etc..
Approach with built-in commands
First :substitute the whitespace with a Tab character, and then :retab to a tab stop to column 8, expanding to spaces (for your given example):
:.,.+4substitute/\s\+/\t/ | set tabstop=7 expandtab | '[,']retab
(I'm omitting the resetting of the modified options, should that matter to you.)
Approach with plugin
My AlignFromCursor plugin has commands that align text to the right of the cursor to a certain column. Combine that with a :global command that invokes this for all lines in the range, and a W motion to go to the second word in each, and you'll get:
.,.+4global/^/exe 'normal! W' | LeftAlignFromCursor 8
I use the Tabular plugin. After installing it, you run the following command:
:%Tab/\s
where \s means whitespace character
I have made two functions for this problem.
I have posted it here : https://github.com/imbichie/vim-vimrc-/blob/master/MCCB_MCCE.vim
We need to call this function in vim editor and give the Number of Occurrence of the Character or Space that you wants to move and the character inside the '' and the column number.
The number of occurrence can be from the starting of each line (MCCB function) or can be at the end of each line (MCCE function).
for the above example mentioned in the question we can use the MCCB function and the character we can use space, so the usage will be like this in the vim editor.
:1,5call MCCB(1,' ',8)
So this will move the first space (' ') to the 8th column from line number 1 to 5.

How to insert variable number of spaces necessary to align textual columns in Vim?

I’m a fan of Visual mode in Vim, as it allows to insert text before any given column.
For example, insertion of spaces after the quotation leaders below:
> one
> two
> three
can be done via <Ctrl-V>jjI <Esc>:
> one
> two
> three
as follows:
Start Visual mode with Ctrl-V.
Extend visual selection with jj.
Insert some spaces with I__.
Propagate the change to all the lines of the block selection with Esc.
Now I have a text file that needs some formatting. This is what it looks like:
start() -- xxx
initialize() -- xxx
go() -- xxx
Now I want to align part of this text to arrange it into columns like this:
start() -- xxx
initialize() -- xxx
go() -- xxx
The problem I have is that I cannot insert a different amount of indentation into each line and merely indenting a fixed amount of spaces/tabs is insufficient.
How can you do an indentation where all indented text will have to be aligned at the same column?
Update
I only figured out a rather verbose and unwieldy method:
Find the string position to indent from: \--.
Insert n (let's say 20) spaces before that: 20i <Esc>.
Delete a part of those spaces back to a certain column (let's say 15): d|15.
Save those steps as a macro and repeat the macro as often as necessary.
But this approach is very ugly, though!
I'm much better off without any vim plugins.
Here is my solution:
<Shift-V>jj:!column -ts --
Then insert -- into multiple lines just as you wrote in the question.
You can also append a number of comments at insertion time.
:set virtualedit=all
<Ctrl-V>jjA-- xxx<Esc>
You have to use a specific plugin, you can use either Tabular or Align plugin in this case.
They both allow you to align text on specific characters, like -- in your example. Their syntax is a bit different though. Pick the one that suit you the most.
Without plugin and if you have already entered your comments without emix's solution:
:,+2 s/--/ &
This will ensure all comments are to be shifted leftwise in order to align them properly.
Then blockwise select the column to which you want to align the text, and : 100<
An easy way to align text in columns is to use the Tabular or
Align plugin. If neither of these is ready at hand, one can use
the following somewhat tricky (and a little cumbersome looking) yet
perfectly working (for the case in question) commands.1,2
:let m=0|g/\ze -- /let m=max([m,searchpos(#/,'c')[1]])
:%s//\=repeat(' ',m-col('.'))
The purpose of the first command is to determine the width of the
column to the left of the separator (which I assume to be --
here). The width is calculated as a maximum of the lengths of the text
in the first column among all the lines. The :global command is used
to enumerate the lines containing the separator (the other lines do
not require aligning). The \ze atom located just after the beginning
of the pattern, sets the end of the match at the same position where
it starts (see :help \ze). Changing the borders of the match does
not affect the way :global command works, the pattern is written in
such a manner just to match the needs of the next substitution
command: Since these two commands could share the same pattern, it can
be omitted in the second one.
The command that is run on the matched lines,
:let m=max([m,searchpos(#/,'c')[1]])
calls the searchpos() function to search for the pattern used in the
parent :global command, and to get the column position of the match.
The pattern is referred to as #/ using the last search pattern
register (see :help "/). This takes advantage of the fact that the
:global command updates the / register as soon as it starts
executing. The c flag passed as the second argument in the
searchpos() call allows the match at the first character of a line
(:global positions the cursor at the very beginning of the line to
execute a command on), because it could be that there is no text to
the left of the separator. The searchpos() function returns a list,
the first element of which is the line number of the matched position,
and the second one is the column position. If the command is run on
a line, the line matches the pattern of the containing :global
command. As searchpos() is to look for the same pattern, there is
definitely a match on that line. Therefore, only the column starting
the match is in interest, so it gets extracted from the returning list
by the [1] subscript. This very position equals to the width of the
text in the first column of the line, plus one. Hence, the m variable
is set to the maximum of its current value and that column position.
The second command,
:%s//\=repeat(' ',m-col('.'))
pads the first occurrence of the separator on all of the lines that
contain it, with the number of spaces that is missing to make the text
before the separator to take m characters, minus one. This command
is a global substitution replacing an empty interval just before the
separator (see the comment about the :global command above) with the
result of evaluation of the expression (see :help sub-replace-\=)
repeat(' ',m-col('.'))
The repeat() function repeats its first argument (as string) the
number of times given in the second argument. Since on every
substitution the cursor is moved to the start of the pattern match,
m-col('.') equals exactly to the number of spaces needed to shift
the separator to the right to align columns (col('.') returns the
current column position of the cursor).
1 Below is a one-line version of this pair of commands.
:let m=0|exe'g/\ze -- /let m=max([m,searchpos(#/,"c")[1]])'|%s//\=repeat(' ',m-col('.'))
2 In previous revisions of the answer the commands used
to be as follows.
:let p=[0]|%s/^\ze\(.*\) -- /\=map(p,'max([v:val,len(submatch(1))+1])')[1:0]/
:exe'%s/\ze\%<'.p[0].'c -- /\=repeat(" ",'.p[0].'-col("."))'
Those who are interested in these particular commands can find their
detailed description in this answer’s edit history.
This is a modification on Benoit's answer that has two steps.
First step, block select text search and replace -- with lots of spaces.
'<,'>s/--/ --/
Now all the comments should have lots of spaces, but still be uneven.
Second step, block select the text again and use another regex to match all the characters you want to keep (say the first 20 characters or so) plus all the spaces following, and to replace it with a copy of those first 20 characters:
'<,'>s/\(.\{20}\)\s*/\1/
Not quite as easy as Benoit's, but I couldn't figure out how to make his second step work.

Running AWK in Vim's search

How can you run AWK in Vim's selection of the search?
My pseudo-code
%s/!awk '{ print $2 }'//d
I am trying to delete the given column in the file.
Though they probably address the issue of the original poster, none of the answer addresses the issue advertised in the title of the question. My proposal to remove the first line of the question and to retitle it as "Deleting one column in vim" having been unanimously rejected, here is a solution for people arriving there by actually looking for that.
Deleting a column (here the second one, as in OP's pseudocode example) with awk in vim :
:%!awk '{$2=""; print $0}'
Of course, it also works for a portion of the file — e.g. for lines 10 to 20 :
:10,20!awk '{$2=""; print $0}'
As for "[running] awk in Vim's selection of the search", not sure you can exactly do that but anyway the search and substitution is an easy job for awk, if not its primary purpose. The following replaces "pattern" with "betterpattern" in the second column if it matches :
:%!awk '$2~"pattern" {gsub("pattern","betterpattern",$2)}
Note that the NOT operator requires escaping (\! instead of !). The following replaces the value in the second column by its increment by 10 if it matches "number" and let other lines unchanged :
:%!awk '$2~"number" {gsub($1,$1+10)} $2\!~"number" {print $0}'
Appart from this point it's just awk syntax.
In command mode, press Ctrl-v to go into visual mode, then you can block-select the column using cursor movement keys. You can then yank and put it or delete it or whatever you need using the appropriate vim commands and keystrokes.
You do not have to use awk, even if the second column is not a rectangular region. Use a substitution:
:%s/ \w\+ / /
The second column is made up of at least one from word characters (\w\+) separated by blanks. The replacement is one blank. This one is for a selected range of lines:
:'<,'>s/ \w\+ / /
if you want to delete something, use :%s/pattern//
pattern can't be a command, it's mostly a regular expression. expressing 2nd field in regular expression is not very easy
if you want to delete 2nd field, you can filter the text through cut utility
:%! cut -d ' ' -f 2 --complement
You can delete a given column in a file just from vim.
In command mode use the following to delete column n:
:%s/\(.\{n-1}\).\{1}\(.*$\)/\1\2/g
you could press 0, then press w to go to your 2nd column, and do cw.

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