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@tpope
Created January 26, 2010 19:51
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inoremap <silent> <Bar> <Bar><Esc>:call <SID>align()<CR>a
function! s:align()
let p = '^\s*|\s.*\s|\s*$'
if exists(':Tabularize') && getline('.') =~# '^\s*|' && (getline(line('.')-1) =~# p || getline(line('.')+1) =~# p)
let column = strlen(substitute(getline('.')[0:col('.')],'[^|]','','g'))
let position = strlen(matchstr(getline('.')[0:col('.')],'.*|\s*\zs.*'))
Tabularize/|/l1
normal! 0
call search(repeat('[^|]*|',column).'\s\{-\}'.repeat('.',position),'ce',line('.'))
endif
endfunction
@agibralter
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Ah cool, thank you!

@tswicegood
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FYI: I just added this to my after/ftplugin/cucumber.vim and it works like a charm. Very nice.

@nmunson
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nmunson commented May 17, 2011

Thanks! Added this to my vimrc and it works perfectly.

@jznhljg
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jznhljg commented Jul 28, 2011

I copied this into my .vimrc. And I have installed Tabular.vim successfully.
But it doesn't work. I input ab | cd | ef and nothing happened. What's wrong?!

@tpope
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tpope commented Jul 28, 2011

@jznhljg, that doesn't look like a valid Cucumber table to me.

@jznhljg
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jznhljg commented Jul 28, 2011

@tpope, I just want to edit some plain text, can I use this function to automatically adjust the padding space?

@tpope
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tpope commented Jul 28, 2011

Sure, if you relax the regex a bit. As it stands now, it's hell bent on avoiding false positives.

@jznhljg
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jznhljg commented Jul 28, 2011 via email

@ests
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ests commented Sep 7, 2011

I was looking for some solution for dealing with Cuke tables in gVIM similar or close to the one TextMate bundle for Cucumber has.
But this is so much better, thanks a lot Tim, as usual :)

@MaienM
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MaienM commented Oct 2, 2011

For those interested, I made a modified version of this that does the same for equals (=) signs. You can find it in the list of forks to the right, or here: https://gist.github.com/1258015
Credits still go to Tim for the awesome original, I just made a few small changes.

@quentindecock
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For those who are interested I made a little plugin that you can use easily with pathogen, it is available here: https://github.com/quentindecock/vim-cucumber-align-pipes

Feedback are welcome,

Enjoy,

@dhruvasagar
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For those interested, I made a little plugin that extends this concept to creating full fledged tables as you type :). It is available here - https://github.com/dhruvasagar/vim-table-mode. You can put let g:table_mode_border=0 in your vimrc to get the same behavior as this plugin.

Also you can change the separator itself by let g:table_mode_separator='=' or whatever you need to achieve the same effect for other type of characters. Please refer to the :h table-mode.txt for more information. Feedback is welcome :).

Thanks.

@wildskyf
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This is really useful!
Thx a lot!

@timabell
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Thanks tpope for this and all your other amazing work. I ended up here after asking this question: http://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/6908/how-can-i-replace-a-word-in-a-column-without-changing-the-width

@eternalcyan
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this function really awesome! thanks

@zoliky
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zoliky commented Mar 26, 2020

Can I make this to work only on specific file formats such as AsciiDoc? Is it okay to add the code to ftplugin/asciidoc.vim? Thanks!

@tpope
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tpope commented Mar 26, 2020

Sure, make it a <buffer> map and unmap it in b:undo_ftplugin.

@namjul
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namjul commented Feb 19, 2021

I have recreated it in lua for anyone that is interested.

local cmd = vim.cmd
local fn = vim.fn

function _G.alignMdTable()
  local pattern = '^%s*|%s.*%s|%s*$'
  local lineNumber = fn.line('.')
  local currentColumn = fn.col('.')
  local previousLine = fn.getline(lineNumber - 1)
  local currentLine = fn.getline('.')
  local nextLine = fn.getline(lineNumber + 1)

  if fn.exists(':Tabularize') and currentLine:match('^%s*|') and (previousLine:match(pattern) or nextLine:match(pattern)) then
    local column = #currentLine:sub(1, currentColumn):gsub('[^|]', '')
    local position = #fn.matchstr(currentLine:sub(1, currentColumn), ".*|\\s*\\zs.*")
    cmd('Tabularize/|/l1') -- `l` means left aligned and `1` means one space of cell padding
    cmd('normal! 0')
    fn.search(('[^|]*|'):rep(column) .. ('\\s\\{-\\}'):rep(position), 'ce', lineNumber)
  end
end

@rodhash
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rodhash commented May 23, 2022

local cmd = vim.cmd local fn = vim.fn function _G.alignMdTable() local pattern = '^%s*|%s.%s|%s$' local lineNumber = fn.line('.') local currentColumn = fn.col('.') local previousLine = fn.getline(lineNumber - 1) local currentLine = fn.getline('.') local nextLine = fn.getline(lineNumber + 1) if fn.exists(':Tabularize') and currentLine:match('^%s*|') and (previousLine:match(pattern) or nextLine:match(pattern)) then local column = #currentLine:sub(1, currentColumn):gsub('[^|]', '') local position = #fn.matchstr(currentLine:sub(1, currentColumn), ".|\s\zs.") cmd('Tabularize/|/l1') -- l means left aligned and 1 means one space of cell padding cmd('normal! 0') fn.search(('[^|]|'):rep(column) .. ('\s\{-\}'):rep(position), 'ce', lineNumber) end end

Thank you sir!

Recently moved all my config to lua, u know just playing around and getting to know it .. and this amazing piece of code was one of the missing parts on my new setup. Seems to work just fine.

@Harsha9554
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@namjul hey thank you so much, worked like a charm.

@rockyzhang24
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@namjul it works perfectly. Thanks a lot.

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