Question

7

Deleting first column with vim

rated 0 times [ 7] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 18934 / 3 Years ago, wed, august 11, 2021, 4:35:33

I have a text file.

number 1_1 	 number1_2 	 etc

number 2_1 	 number2_2 	 etc

I want to remove the first column of this file (corresponding to number1_1, number2_1 etc, ie the numbers before the first tab for each row). I read this post that proposes a solution to delete the first column (see Peter's answer). However, it doesn't work for me as the numbers have different sizes and I cannot repeat the operation to delete the first column. How can I do then?

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rryble

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3 Years ago

answered 3 Years ago fectlyole · Accepted Answer

This should delete all chars before and including the 1st tab on any line:

:%s/^[^ ]* //

Command line cut:

cut -f 2- {filename.txt} > {filenamenew.txt}

cut defaults to tabs; if you want something else like a space add -d " ".
-f is fields to copy over. 2- means all from (and including) column 2.