Trying to remove the first column of a document.

Question

I'm using this command below to remove the first column of a document:

%s/^[^\t]*\zs\t[^\t]*\ze//g

but it says command not found. Any idea?

Do you start command-line typing with hitting colon? Don't you use `S` instead of `s`? — Benoit, Feb 04 '11 at 09:59
possible duplicate of [Can you delete a column of text in Vim / Vi / gVim?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1028413/can-you-delete-a-column-of-text-in-vim-vi-gvim) — dogbane, Feb 04 '11 at 10:04
Please don't [cross-post](http://superuser.com/questions/241604/trying-to-remove-the-first-column-of-a-document). — Dennis Williamson, Feb 04 '11 at 11:02

score 14 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 04 '11 at 09:59

14

Here's the quickest way to remove the first column:

Press gg to go to the first character in the document.
Hit Ctrl+V to enter visual block mode.
Hit G (that is, shift-g) to go to the end of the document
Hit x to delete the first column.

answered Feb 04 '11 at 09:59

Peter

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har, i posted that on SU (see cross post) .. but then deleted it because it is unclear if the first char already makes the first column .. :) – akira Feb 05 '11 at 11:47
This seems to delete the column with the first character, not necessarily the first column. If you want to delete a column of whitespace, for example, this won't work. – rcreswick Aug 31 '15 at 17:59

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 04 '11 at 10:00

I like the block selection solution of @Peter, but if you want to use substitution you need this command:

:%s/^.//

Let's analyze why this works:

:%s exec a substitution on all the document
/^./ select the first character after the start of the line
/ and replace it with... nothing.

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 04 '11 at 09:59

1

If I understand you correctly, this should do the job:

:%s/^[^\t]//

The command removes all leading characters that are not a tabulator.

Alternatively, if you're editing a tabulator separated values document and want to remove all "columns" before the first tabulator, then this should do it for you:

%s/^[^\t]*\t//

answered Feb 04 '11 at 09:59

René Nyffenegger

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%s/^[^\t]*\t// worked fro me. It deleted the first column in a tab-del-file. – z atef Dec 10 '18 at 18:15

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Jul 01 '14 at 03:03

0

The below command worked for me:

:%s/^\w*//

edited Jul 01 '14 at 03:03

ugo

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answered Jul 01 '14 at 02:37

acheng

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Trying to remove the first column of a document.

4 Answers4