Change all characters in a column over multiple lines

Question

I'm not sure how to explain what I'd like to do, but I've seen this in Textmate and it was quite useful. Let's say I have this text:

:aa => foo,
:ab => foo,
:ac => foo,
:ad => foo

Now I want to select all first characters of the keys (the 4 'a' in the lne) and remove them, so that the result looks like this:

:a => foo,
:b => foo,
:c => foo,
:d => foo

Some kind of visual mode accounting columns not lines.

score 9 · Answer 1 · answered May 06 '11 at 20:06

9

Use Ctrl+V to enter blockwise visual mode. You can then select a block of text using the normal movement keys and press x to delete it. I will perform a multi-line insert.

See :help ^V and :help visual-operators in vim for full details.

answered May 06 '11 at 20:06

John Kugelman

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score 7 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 22 '19 at 11:27

7

Use vim in column mode. To use it, press:

Ctrl+V to go into column mode.

Select the columns and rows where you want to enter your text.

Shift+I to go into insert mode in column mode.

Type in the text you want to enter.

^{Note: Don't be discouraged by the fact that only the first row is changed.}

Esc to apply your change (or alternately Ctrl+C).

You will now see your changed applied.

Source: Column Edit Mode in VI.

edited Feb 22 '19 at 11:27

kenorb

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answered May 06 '11 at 20:05

Marcin

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Please explain the solution here, do not just link to it. – Tgr Mar 06 '16 at 02:49
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The current location of the article is https://blog.pivotal.io/labs/labs/column-edit-mode-in-vi but the answer is too short to fix it. – Tgr Mar 06 '16 at 02:50

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:46

2

Use Ctrl-V to select in block mode, then directional and editing commands to do the rest. See How to remove quotes surrounding the first two columns in Vim?

edited May 23 '17 at 11:46

Community

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answered May 06 '11 at 20:06

Alanyst

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered May 06 '11 at 20:06

1

You're looking for Visual Block mode, which is accessible by Ctrl+V in Normal mode. Works just like Alt+select in TextMate.

answered May 06 '11 at 20:06

Austin Taylor

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered May 06 '11 at 20:11

1

As others have said Ctrl-V is the answer. For a tutorial see Vimcast episode "Selecting columns with visual block mode"

answered May 06 '11 at 20:11

nathan

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score 0 · Answer 6 · edited Sep 02 '13 at 11:32

0

In your special case:

:% s/a/

does the job.

edited Sep 02 '13 at 11:32

kleopatra

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answered Sep 02 '13 at 11:31

PeMa

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score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Feb 09 '20 at 12:13

0

You can also use a search and replace to specifically remove the first letter of the lines that start with a colon:

:%s/:./:

answered Feb 09 '20 at 12:13

Sander Vanhove

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Change all characters in a column over multiple lines

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