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Vim 8 - How do I re-number my list after reordering the list - manually or automatically?

Say I have a list like this:

1. apple
2. banana
3. orange
4. plum

Now I want to reorder them by deleting/cutting lines and pasting them in the right spot, but the numbers are no longer in order:

2. banana
1. apple
4. plum
3. orange

How can I re-number this list or have Vim handle a numbered list automatically? (I'll add my answer, but I believe there should be a faster way)

Solution

  • One slightly inefficient way is to reset the numbered list to zeros and then recreate them.

    For instance, once the list looks like this:

    2. banana
1. apple
4. plum
3. orange

    do the following.

    1. Highlight list and run :s/[0-9]*\./0./ to substitute the numbered list for a list all beginning with 0.
    0. banana
0. apple
0. plum
0. orange
    1. Highlight entire list again using gv (as suggested in comments) and do g and then <ctrl> + a to renumber list from 1-n

    EDIT April 2nd, 2024 - Based on the suggestion from @romainl in the comments and from community help in these questions (one and two), I took my solution above and made a Vimscript function that can be added to a .vimrc .

    vnoremap <C-L> :call ReNumberList()<CR>
function! ReNumberList() range
    execute a:firstline .. ',' .. a:lastline .. 's/[0-9]*\./0./'
    execute "normal! gvg\<C-A>"
endfunction

    It works by remapping the shortcut ctrl+L (<C-L>) to the function ReNumberList(). That function does the number substitution on the range of lines, re-highlights the range again (with gv), and finally does the renumbering with g\<C-A>.

    With this, you can highlight an out of order list and then type one shortcut to renumber the whole list!