Sorting words (not lines) in VIM

Question

The built-in VIM :sort command sorts lines of text. I want to sort words in a single line, e.g. transform the line

b a d c e f 

to

a b c d e f 

Currently I accomplish this by selecting the line and then using :!tr ' ' '\n' | sort | tr '\n' ' ', but I'm sure there's a better, simpler, quicker way. Is there?

Note that I use bash so if there's a shorter and more elegant bash command for doing this it's also fine.

EDIT: My use-case is that I have a line that says SOME_VARIABLE="one two three four etc" and I want the words in that variable to be sorted, i.e. I want to have SOME_VARIABLE="etc four one three two".

The end result should preferably be mappable to a shortcut key as this is something I find myself needing quite often.

Answer 1

In pure vim, you could do this:

call setline('.', join(sort(split(getline('.'), ' ')), " ")) 

Edit

To do this so that it works over a range that is less than one line is a little more complicated (this allows either sorting multiple lines individually or sorting part of one line, depending on the visual selection):

command! -nargs=0 -range SortWords call SortWords() " Add a mapping, go to your string, then press vi",s " vi" selects everything inside the quotation " ,s calls the sorting algorithm vmap ,s :SortWords<CR> " Normal mode one: ,s to select the string and sort it nmap ,s vi",s function! SortWords()     " Get the visual mark points     let StartPosition = getpos("'<")     let EndPosition = getpos("'>")      if StartPosition[0] != EndPosition[0]         echoerr "Range spans multiple buffers"     elseif StartPosition[1] != EndPosition[1]         " This is a multiple line range, probably easiest to work line wise          " This could be made a lot more complicated and sort the whole         " lot, but that would require thoughts on how many         " words/characters on each line, so that can be an exercise for         " the reader!         for LineNum in range(StartPosition[1], EndPosition[1])             call setline(LineNum, join(sort(split(getline('.'), ' ')), " "))         endfor     else         " Single line range, sort words         let CurrentLine = getline(StartPosition[1])          " Split the line into the prefix, the selected bit and the suffix          " The start bit         if StartPosition[2] > 1             let StartOfLine = CurrentLine[:StartPosition[2]-2]         else             let StartOfLine = ""         endif         " The end bit         if EndPosition[2] < len(CurrentLine)             let EndOfLine = CurrentLine[EndPosition[2]:]         else             let EndOfLine = ""         endif         " The middle bit         let BitToSort = CurrentLine[StartPosition[2]-1:EndPosition[2]-1]          " Move spaces at the start of the section to variable StartOfLine         while BitToSort[0] == ' '             let BitToSort = BitToSort[1:]             let StartOfLine .= ' '         endwhile         " Move spaces at the end of the section to variable EndOfLine         while BitToSort[len(BitToSort)-1] == ' '             let BitToSort = BitToSort[:len(BitToSort)-2]             let EndOfLine = ' ' . EndOfLine         endwhile          " Sort the middle bit         let Sorted = join(sort(split(BitToSort, ' ')), ' ')         " Reform the line         let NewLine = StartOfLine . Sorted . EndOfLine         " Write it out         call setline(StartPosition[1], NewLine)     endif endfunction 

Answer 2

Using great ideas from your answers, especially Al's answer, I eventually came up with the following:

:vnoremap <F2> d:execute 'normal i' . join(sort(split(getreg('"'))), ' ')<CR> 

This maps the F2 button in visual mode to delete the selected text, split, sort and join it and then re-insert it. When the selection spans multiple lines this will sort the words in all of them and output one sorted line, which I can quickly fix using gqq.

I'll be glad to hear suggestions on how this can be further improved.

Many thanks, I've learned a lot :)

EDIT: Changed '<C-R>"' to getreg('"') to handle text with the char ' in it.