CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vimediting
Casteurr
Casteurr

Reputation: 956

Remove everything but the first column in VIM

I have a text file and I want to remove every word except the first word on every line and I have no idea how to do this.

So, if I have:

one two three
four five
six

I want to remain with:

one
four
six

Got any ideas?

Upvotes: 16

Views: 7234

Answers (3)

chtenb
chtenb

Reputation: 16184

Alternatively, you can do it using a macro. Type qa in normal mode to start recording a macro in register a. Then type 0elDj to delete everything on the current line but the first word, and go to the next line. Type q again to end recording the macro.

Now you can fire the macro on any line with @a. Run :%norm! @a to apply the macro to every line in the buffer.

This way you can repeat any complex operation you want, not just substituting. I love macros :)

EDIT: Note that it doesn't work when a line has strictly less than 2 characters. For this reason, this is generally not the best approach to this problem.

Upvotes: 2

user1902824
user1902824

Reputation:

A more robust solution is to filter it through a program that is really good at these kinds of manipulations: awk.

Say you had this content:

one two three

  four five
            six

Run :%!awk '{print $1}' and you will get:

one

four
six

awk's default field separator character is a space, though you could change it to whatever you wanted, depending on what you needed.

Upvotes: 7

l4mpi
l4mpi

Reputation: 5149

If the lines don't start with whitespace, you could replace ' .*' (which matches everything after the first word) with an empty string:

:%s/ .*//g

Upvotes: 20

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