Say I had the following text word1 word2 word3 word4 and the cursor was somewhere between word2 and word3 . Question What's the quickest way to replace the multiple spaces between word2 and word3 with a single space in Vim? Initial thoughts :s/ */ /g However, I thought there might be something quicker like diw but for spaces. It would also be good if the strategy also worked when the cursor was on the w of word3 or the 2 or word2 .

Reputation: 34907

Efficient way to remove multiple spaces between two words in Vim

Say I had the following text

 word1 word2              word3 word4

and the cursor was somewhere between word2 and word3.

Question

What's the quickest way to replace the multiple spaces between word2 and word3 with a single space in Vim?

Initial thoughts

:s/ */ /g

However, I thought there might be something quicker like diw but for spaces.

It would also be good if the strategy also worked when the cursor was on the w of word3 or the 2 or word2.

Upvotes: 33

Answers (9)

Serge Stroobandt

Reputation: 31498

For a multi-line text

:%s/\s\+/ /g

Upvotes: 1

chipfall

Reputation: 360

If you are editing dt<nextchar> on the second space to the right of word2 would work, in this case dtw.

Upvotes: 0

Miguel

Reputation: 796

In 3 keystrokes, add this to your init.vim (neovim) or .vimrc (vim):

nnoremap <silent> di<Space> /<Space><Space>diwi<Space><Esc>:noh<CR>
nnoremap <silent> da<Space> /<Space><CR>diw:noh<CR>

Now, in NORMAL mode, you can "delete irrelevant space" to replace by a single space, and "delete all space" to remove all spaces.

This applies to the current or next block of spaces. Unfortunately, it cannot be repeated with the dot . operator.

Upvotes: 0

Gryglicki Łukasz

Reputation: 37

%s/\(\w\)\s\+\(\w\)/\1 \2/g
%  - global
s - search
\( - escape (
\w - (any letter, digit)
\) - escape )
\(\w\) - remember letter/digit before space as \1
\s - whitespace
\+ - escape +
\s\+ - 1 or more whitespace space
\(\w\) - remember letter/digit after space(s) as \2
/ - replcae with
\1 - remembered last letter/digit before space
' ' - space character here - single space
\2 - remembered first letter/digit after white space(s).
/ - end of replace
g - globally

Upvotes: 1

Cyrus Talladen

Reputation: 107

I would do this in two steps

$ // cursor goes to space at the end of the line
dw // deletes whitespaces ( use . to repeat as necessary)

Upvotes: 0

Seb

Reputation: 6717

I use (bound to a hotkey)

i<enter><esc>kJ

i - insert mode

k - up a line

J - join lines together

This works no matter where the cursor is inside the whitespace or on the w of word3, and puts the cursor on the beginning of the word that just got joined. If you want it to work with the 2 on word2, just replace the first i with a.

Upvotes: 2