Align text on an equals sign in vim

Question

I tend to align code on equal signs for better readability. From this:

$ = jQuery.sub() Survey = App.Survey Sidebar = App.Sidebar Main = App.Main 

To this:

$       = jQuery.sub() Survey  = App.Survey Sidebar = App.Sidebar Main    = App.Main 

Is there an easy way to do this in vim?

Answer 1

The best plugin I found so far is Tabular.vim.

Easiest way to install it is by using the Pathogen plugin, and then cloning the Tabular git repository to ~/.vim/bundle/tabular. Full instructions in the Pathogen README.

After it's installed, using it is just a matter of putting your cursor somewhere in the paragraph you want to align and running:

:Tab /= 

Answer 2

For a simple solution that does not involve installing a plugin, just filter through the Unix column command.

Note there are two ways to do this depending on whether your column command supports -o.

GNU column command (Linux etc)

:% ! column -t -s= -o= 

That's it.

BSD column command (Mac OS X etc)

Step one, filter through column -t:

:% ! column -t 

Step two, remove the padding around the delimiter:

:%s/ = /=/ 

Initial text is

$ = jQuery.sub() Survey = App.Survey Sidebar = App.Sidebar Main = App.Main 

After step one it becomes

$        =  jQuery.sub() Survey   =  App.Survey Sidebar  =  App.Sidebar Main     =  App.Main 

And after step two

$       = jQuery.sub() Survey  = App.Survey Sidebar = App.Sidebar Main    = App.Main 

Or, if you want to do it in one step:

:% ! column -t | sed 's/ = /=/' 

For more info, man column.