How to columnize text with tabs (in vim or on the shell)
I have a frequent need to manually manipulate tab-delimited text for data entry and other purposes. When I do this, it helps if the text is aligned properly into columns. For example (assuming 4-space tabs):
# original format
abcdefghijklmnop field2
abcdefgh field2
abcdefghijkl field2
# ideal format
abcdefghijklmnop field2
abcdefgh field2
abcdefghijkl field2
I am very familiar with using the column
utility to columnize text this way, but the problem is that it uses spaces to align the columns, and I specifically need tabs. This requirement also appears to rule out the Tabularize plug-in.
Is there any way that I can columnize text with tabs specifically, either within vim
or at the shell? It looks like I might be able to do it with groff
/tbl
, but honestly I'd rather columnize it by hand than mess with that....
Solution 1:
The csv.vim - A Filetype plugin for csv files also supports tab-delimited files, and has :ArrangeColumn
and :UnArrangeColumn
commands for that.
Solution 2:
Set the tab display size to just larger than your longest field.
# original format
abcdefghijklmnop<Tab>field2
abcdefgh<Tab>field2
abcdefghijkl<Tab>field2
I have spaces!<Tab>field2
In Vim,
:echo len("abcdefghijklmnop") " Reports 16
:set noexpandtab tabstop=17
You can probably condense this to one command, but I don't know how. If you're running a modern Vim, :set list
will indicate hard tabs with a fancy character (which you can also configure). Otherwise they'll just show as ^I
(not what you want) or whitespace.
# displays like this
abcdefghijklmnop>field2
abcdefgh> field2
abcdefghijkl> field2
I have spaces!> field2
EDIT: An example from a real running vim!
Solution 3:
When you have properly space-aligned the table (with the mentioned Tabularize or the alternative Align plugin), you can then convert the spaces to tabs with the following commands:
:%retab!
:%substitute/ \+/\t/g
The first command replaces indent with tabs where possible without changing the widths (this assumes you've :set noexpandtab
), the second then transforms the left-over spaces to (larger) tabstops.