How to transpose the contents of lines and columns in a file in Vim?

Question

I know I can use Awk, but I am on a Windows box, and I am making a function for others that may not have Awk. I also know I can write a C program, but I would love not to have s

Answer 1

Here is a command in Vim language. So you don't have to compile Vim with +python support.

function! s:transpose()
    let maxcol = 0
    let lines = getline(1, line('$'))

    for line in lines
        let len = len(line)
        if len > maxcol 
            let maxcol = len
        endif
    endfor

    let newlines = []
    for col in range(0, maxcol - 1)
        let newline = ''
        for line in lines
            let line_with_extra_spaces = printf('%-'.maxcol.'s', line)
            let newline .= line_with_extra_spaces[col]
        endfor
        call add(newlines, newline)
    endfor

    1,$"_d
    call setline(1, newlines)
endfunction

command! TransposeBuffer call s:transpose()

Put this in newly created .vim file inside vim/plugin dir or put this to your [._]vimrc.
Execute :TransposeBuffer to transpose current buffer

Answer 2

I've developed a vim plugin to do it. You can find it here. Run :Transpose to transpose the whole file.

Answer 3

The following function performs the required editing operations to “transpose“ the contents of the current buffer, regardless of the number of lines in it.

fu!T()
let[m,n,@s]=[0,line('$'),"lDG:pu\r``j@s"]
g/^/let m=max([m,col('$')])
exe'%norm!'.m."A \e".m.'|D'
sil1norm!@s
exe'%norm!'.n.'gJ'
endf

For the sake of “golfing”, here is its one-line version:

let[m,n,@s]=[0,line('$'),"lDG:pu\r``j@s"]|exe'g/^/let m=max([m,col("$")])'|exe'%norm!'.m."A \e".m.'|D'|exe'sil1norm!@s'|exe'%norm!'.n.'gJ'

Answer 4

Charles Duffy's code could be shortened/improved using izip_longest instead of izip:

function! Rotate()
    :py import vim, itertools
    :py vim.current.buffer[:] = [''.join(c) for c in itertools.izip_longest(*vim.current.buffer, fillvalue=" ")]
endfunction

Answer 5

If scripts don't do it for you, you could record the actions to a register (the carriage returns are added for readability):

qa
1G0
xGo<Esc>p
1G0j
xGp
q

This will give you a macro that you could run against the example above, or any 2-line strings of the same length. You only need to know the length of the string so you can iterate the operation the correct number of time

16@a

A fairly basic solution, but it works.

Answer 6

Vim support for a number of scripting languages built in -- see the Python interface as an example.

Just modify vim.current.buffer appropriately and you're set.

To be a little more specific:

function! Rotate()
python <<EOF
import vim, itertools
max_len = max((len(n) for n in vim.current.buffer))

vim.current.buffer[:] = [
    ''.join(n) for n in itertools.izip(
        *( n + ' ' * (max_len - len(n))
           for n in vim.current.buffer))]
EOF
endfunction