CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vim
Léo Léopold Hertz 준영
Léo Léopold Hertz 준영

Reputation: 141180

Unable to match one or more whitespaces in Vim

I want match spaces at the beginning of lines in Vim

PseudoCode of what I want to do

^( )*

I know the following from manual

notation        meaning             equivalent  decimal value(s)        
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

<Space>         space                            32     *space*

I am not sure how to use the decimal value 32.

How can you match one or more whitespaces in Vim?

Upvotes: 71

Views: 67061

Answers (9)

sunRay
sunRay

Reputation:

To match spaces or tabs from the beginning of the line, you can also use: ^\s*.

Upvotes: 0

user55400
user55400

Reputation: 4029

Btw, don't be surprised if you are using the hlsearch option and your whole text lights up after entering / * - instead of just the spaces. That's because zero spaces can match anywhere!

So matching zero or more of anything is only helpful when used in conjunction with something else.

Addition after clarification of question:

To match one or more whitespaces at the beginning of a line do:

/^\s\+

See:

:help whitespace
:help /\+

Upvotes: 20

Sander Marechal
Sander Marechal

Reputation: 23216

/ * matches zero or more spaces.

Example:

/foo *bar will match foobar, foo bar, foo    bar,etcetera`.

Note that if you want to use parenthesis like in your example then you need to escape them with a \\. Vim expressions are not standard Perl regular expressions nor POSIX regular expressions. You example would be:

\\( \\)*

Upvotes: 0

Lucas Lindstr&#246;m
Lucas Lindstr&#246;m

Reputation: 1968

Typing 

/^ \+

In command mode will match one or more space characters at the beginning of a line.

Typing

/^\s\+

In command mode will match one or more whitespace characters (tabs etc. as well as spaces) at the beginning of a line.

Upvotes: 122

MSalters
MSalters

Reputation: 179819

You're almost there. You don't need the ( ). The regex is just "^ *", and in Vim you search with / so you'd enter /^ *

Note that this matches on every line, because every line starts with zero or more spaces! So, do you really intend that? If you meant "one or more spaces", you need to replace * by \+ (in most regex languages, it's +, but the + is escaped in vim). So, /^ \+

Upvotes: 1

Andy
Andy

Reputation: 3854

If you're looking to match any sort of whitespace (be it space or tab) the following regex is applicable

^[\s]*

^ matches the beginning of the line
[\s] / [\t] matches space or tab character (both seem to work, though according to the vim documentation you should use [\s]
* provides repetition, 0 or more.

of course using the / to search as mentioned by others.

Upvotes: 5

gacrux
gacrux

Reputation: 960

If I understand correctly..

/ * will match 0 or more spaces

/ {0,n} will match 0 to n spaces (where n is a number)

To match 1 or more space starting from the beginning of the line:

/^ \+

Upvotes: 10

cammarin
cammarin

Reputation:

I think you can really do is match spaces until some kind of non-space character, right? Try this:

^\( \+\)

Or, for any kind of whitespace:

^\(\s\+\)

In Vim regex (, ) and + need to be escaped. Also, if you planning to use backreference, the syntax is \1 (the first group, for example) and not $1 like Perl.

Upvotes: 0

paxdiablo
paxdiablo

Reputation: 881463

Spaces at the beginning of the line in Vim:

/^  *

That's:

  • '/' for search.
  • '^' for start of line.
  • ' ' for at least one space.
  • ' *' for zero or more spaces after that.

Upvotes: 6

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