Re: Leading spaces -> tabs

[Gerald Lai]

On Fri, 21 Apr 2006, Dominic Evans wrote:

[snip]

the following commands replace leading spaces by tabs according to the
current value of the 'tabstop' option

 :%s/^ \+/\=substitute(submatch(0), repeat(' ', &tabstop), "\t", 'g')

 :%s/^ \+/\=substitute(submatch(0), ' \{' . &tabstop . '\}', "\t", 'g')

The first command only works in VIM 7.0 due to the use of the new
repeat() function, but the second one should work in all versions.

Regards,
J??rgen

Thanks to both.

I'd just like to point out that J??rgen    provided you a subsearch &
replace alternative that follows the format:

  :%s/<search>/\=substitute(submatch(0), "<subsearch>", "<subreplace>", "g")

This and the repeated search & replace are indispensable tools that
allow for advanced editing.

HTH :)
--
Gerald