Align text on an equals sign in vim

For a simple solution that does not involve installing a plugin, just filter through the Unix column command.

Note there are two ways to do this depending on whether your column command supports -o.

GNU column command (Linux etc)

:% ! column -t -s= -o=

That's it.

BSD column command (Mac OS X etc)

Step one, filter through column -t:

:% ! column -t

Step two, remove the padding around the delimiter:

:%s/ = /=/

Initial text is

$ = jQuery.sub()
Survey = App.Survey
Sidebar = App.Sidebar
Main = App.Main

After step one it becomes

$        =  jQuery.sub()
Survey   =  App.Survey
Sidebar  =  App.Sidebar
Main     =  App.Main

And after step two

$       = jQuery.sub()
Survey  = App.Survey
Sidebar = App.Sidebar
Main    = App.Main

Or, if you want to do it in one step:

:% ! column -t | sed 's/ = /=/'

For more info, man column.

This isn't the easiest way to do things, but it can be done without any plugins.

• Use V and :s/=/ =/ to insert a bunch of spaces before each equals sign.
• Use Ctrl-V to select the column that you want the equals signs to be moved into.
• Press << to "unindent" the right hand side of each equation towards the column you selected, then press . repeatedly until the equals signs are lined up in that column.

The best plugin I found so far is Tabular.vim.

Easiest way to install it is by using the Pathogen plugin, and then cloning the Tabular git repository to ~/.vim/bundle/tabular. Full instructions in the Pathogen README.

After it's installed, using it is just a matter of putting your cursor somewhere in the paragraph you want to align and running:

:Tab /=