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vimpluginstabular

Create table around text

I have a list of words every is on its own line. This is the first column of a table. I'd like to create second column by hand.

I'd like to use some plugin now, that will create an ASCII table around the text, so I have nice formatting (the starting letters in each column should be in one "vertical line" or I should be able to quickly move to the correct position with one shortcut).

Is there such a plugin for vim that eases editing such tables and controls the formatting?

Solution

  • If you just want text alignment into table format, I use this and it works well:

    http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=294

    I wrote a command line tool a few years ago which does more closely what you want:

    It allows you to edit a table in CSV format:

    1,my table,another field
2,my table,yet another field

    Then select the block in vim, and filter it using:

    '<,'>!~/scripts/tab

    This then gives you:

    ------------------------------------
| 1 | my table | another field     |
| 2 | my table | yet another field |
------------------------------------

    If you want to edit the table again, you can select the whole table and repeat with untab (which is just a symlink -> tab) which converts the table back to CSV again so that you can edit.

    There's also various other options:

    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Command/Option | Purpose                                              |
|----------------|------------------------------------------------------|
| tab            | Reads from stdin and tabulates comma seperated input |
| tab <-t>       | Tabulates input and assumes first row are titles     |
| tab <-h>       | Prints this help                                     |
| tab <-nb>      | Tabulates without a border                           |
| tab <-fw X>    | Wrap fields greater than X big don't break words     |
| tab <-fs X>    | Wrap fields greater than X big and break words       |
| tab <-vp X>    | Vertically pad table by X lines                      |
| tab <-hp X>    | Horizontally pad fields by X chars                   |
| tab <-b X>     | Tabulates with a border made from char X             |
|----------------|------------------------------------------------------|
| untab          | Reads from stdin and untabulates table input         |
| untab <-b X>   | Untabulate a table with border char X                |
| untab <-nb>    | Untabulate a borderless table                        |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------