reformat in vim for a nice column layout

Question

I have this dataset in a csv file

1.33570301776, 3.61194e-06, 7.24503e-06, -9.91572e-06, 1.25098e-05, 0.0102828, 0.010352, 0.0102677, 0.0103789, 0.00161604, 0.00167978, 0.00159998, 0.00182596, 0.0019804, 0.0133687, 0.010329, 0.00163437, 0.00191202, 0.0134425 
1.34538754675, 3.3689e-06, 9.86066e-06, -9.12075e-06, 1.18058e-05, 0.00334344, 0.00342207, 0.00332897, 0.00345504, 0.00165532, 0.00170412, 0.00164234, 0.00441903, 0.00459294, 0.00449357, 0.00339737, 0.00166596, 0.00451926, 0.00455153
1.34808186291, -1.99011e-06, 6.53026e-06, -1.18909e-05, 9.52337e-06, 0.00158065, 0.00166529, 0.0015657, 0.0017022, 0.000740644, 0.00078635, 0.000730052, 0.00219736, 0.00238191, 0.00212762, 0.00163783, 0.000750669, 0.00230171, 0.00217917

As you can see, the numbers are formatted differently and misaligned. Is there a way in vim to quickly align the columns properly, so that the result is this

1.33570301776,  3.61194e-06, 7.24503e-06, -9.91572e-06, 1.25098e-05, 0.0102828,  0.010352,   0.0102677,  0.0103789, 0.00161604, 0.00167978, 0.00159998, 0.00182596, 0.0019804,  0.0133687,  0.010329,   0.00163437, 0.00191202, 0.0134425 
1.34538754675,  3.3689e-06,  9.86066e-06, -9.12075e-06, 1.18058e-05, 0.00334344, 0.00342207, 0.00332897, 0.00345504,0.00165532, 0.00170412, 0.00164234, 0.00441903, 0.00459294, 0.00449357, 0.00339737, 0.00166596, 0.00451926, 0.00455153
1.34808186291, -1.99011e-06, 6.53026e-06, -1.18909e-05, 9.52337e-06, 0.00158065, 0.00166529, 0.0015657,  0.0017022, 0.000740644,0.00078635, 0.000730052,0.00219736, 0.00238191, 0.00212762, 0.00163783, 0.000750669,0.00230171, 0.00217917

That would be great to copy and paste sections with ctrl-v. Any hints?

Answer 1

This is a great answer using vim macros: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8363786/59384 - basically, you start recording a macro, format the first column, stop recording then repeat the macro for all remaining lines.

Copy/pasted from that answer:

qa0f:w100i <Esc>19|dwjq4@a

Note the single space after the 100i, and the <Esc> means "press escape"--don't type "<Esc>" literally.

Translation:

qa         -- record macro in hotkey a
0          -- go to beginning of line
f:         -- go to first : symbol
w          -- go to next non-space character after the symbol
100i <Esc> -- insert 100 spaces
19|        -- go to 19th column (value 19 figured out manually)
dw         -- delete spaces until : symbol
j          -- go to next line
q          -- stop recording macro
4@a        -- run the macro 4 times (for the remaining 4 lines)

Answer 2

I just wrote tablign for this purpose. Install with

pip3 install tablign --user

Then simply mark the table in vim and do

:'<,'>:!tablign

Answer 3

Here’s a pure Vim script answer, no plugins, no macros:

It might be most clear to start out with my problem’s solution as an example. I selected the lines of code I wanted to affect, then used the following command (recall that entering command mode from visual mode automatically prepends the “'<,'>”, so it acts on the visual range):

:'<,'>g``normal / "value<0d>D70|P`

Except I did NOT actually type “<0d>”. You can enter unprintable characters on the command line by pressing ctrl-v, then the key you want to type. “<0d>” is what is rendered on the command line after I typed ‘ctrl-v enter’. Here, it’s parsed by the “normal” command as the exit from “/” search mode. The cursor then jumps to “ value” in the current line.

Then we simply [D]elete the rest of the line, jump to column 70 (or whatever you need in your case), and [P]ut what we just deleted. This does mean we have to determine the width of the widest line, up to our search. If you haven’t put that information in your statusline, you can see the column of the cursor by entering the normal mode command ‘g ctrl-g’. Also note that jumping to a column that doesn’t exist requires the setting 'virtualedit'!

I left the search term for the :g(lobal) command empty, since we used a visual block and wanted to affect every line, but you can leave off using a visual selection (and the “'<,'>”) and put a search term there instead. Or combine a visual selection and a search term to narrow things more finely/easily.

Here’s something I learned recently: if you mess up on a complex command mode command, undo with ‘u’ (if it affected the buffer), then press “q:” to enter a special command history buffer that acts much like a conventional buffer. Edit any line and press enter, and the changed command is entered as a new command. Indispensable if you don’t want to have to stress over formulating everything perfectly the first time.

Answer 4

Also, Tabularize is quite good http://vimcasts.org/episodes/aligning-text-with-tabular-vim/

Answer 5

You could use the csv.vim plugin.

:%ArrangeColumn

However, this will not do exactly what you have asked: it will right adjust the contents of cells, whereas you have your values aligned by the decimal point or by the first digit.

The plugin has many other useful commands for working with CSV files.

Answer 6

We now also have the fabulous EasyAlign plugin, written by junegunn.

Demonstration GIF from its README: