How can I clean up misaligned columns in text?

Question

I have a C program that outputs two columns, utterly misaligned. The reason for the misalignment is lengths of words in the first column are very different.

I have an o

Answer 1

If you want to do the processing in Vim (as opposed to fixing the generator), install the superb align plugin and run the following:

ggVG
\tsp

The first command breaks down to gg (go to the start of the file), V (enter visual line mode), G (go to the end of the file). As a combination, it visually-selects the entire file. \tsp is an Align map that aligns on white-space.

If you prefer to do things at the : command line, you can use an alternative separator (e.g. ###) and use the command-line Align:

:%s/\s\+/###/g
:%Align ###
:%s/### //g

It's longer, but you may find it more logical/memorable.