How to delete text after a specified symbol until the end of the line in Vim?

If the "don't care" part has no pipes, then

:%s/|[^|]*$/|/

which also deals with empty "don't care" parts. And it keeps working if you add new fields before the "don't care" part.

One can simply repeat the Normal-mode command that jumps to the character next to the second | symbol and deletes the rest of the text on the line, for each line in the buffer, via the :normal command:

:%norm!2f|lD

One solution:

:%s!^\([^|]*|\)\{2\}\zs.*!!

Explanation:

• %: on every line
• s: subtitute
• !: start of pattern
• ^: start of line
• \(: start of group
• [^|]*: any number of non-pipe characters
• |: followed by a pipe
• \): end of group
• \{2\}: match two counts of that group
• \zs: start the pattern matching here
• .*: any characters
• !: end of pattern and start of replacement
• !: end of replacement

This will leave lines with fewer than two pipes untouched and will also deal with lines that have more than the two pipes...

Before

id name things that I don't care no pipes
id|name things that I don't care one pipe
id|name|things that I don't care two pipes
id|name|things that I don't care extra pipe at line end|
id|name|things that I don't care | extra pipe mid-line
id|name|things that I don't| care| two extra pipes
name|things that I don't care missing first column and pipe
|name|things that I don't care missing first column

After:

id name things that I don't care no pipes
id|name things that I don't care one pipe
id|name| 
id|name| 
id|name| 
id|name| 
name|things that I don't care missing first column and pipe
|name|