How do I remove first 5 characters in each line in a text file using vi?

Question

How do I remove the first 5 characters in each line in a text file?
I have a file like this:

   4 Alabama
   4 Alaska
   4 Arizona
   4 Arkansas
   4 California
  54 Can
   8 Carolina
   4 Colorado
   4 Connecticut
   8 Dakota
   4 Delaware
  97 Do
   4 Florida
   4 Hampshire
  47 Have
   4 Hawaii

I'd like to remove the number and the space at the beginning of each line in my txt file.

Papst

Answer 1

:%s/^.\{0,5\}// should do the trick. It also handles cases where there are less than 5 characters.

Tiltyard

Thanks, but I needed to add a g to make it work. :%s/^.\{0,5\}//g – Imago

Explanation of the macro? – Johan

Answer 2

Use the regular expression ^..... to match the first 5 characters of each line. use it in a global substitution:

:%s/^.....//

Nucleo

Actually Barmar meant a regexp match - it's what's getting substituted. ^ matches the beginning of the line and . matches any character. :s command substitutes the whole match between the first and second slash (in this case five, possibly different, characters at the beginning of the line) with what's between the last two slashes - nothing, effectively removing them. – Tiltyard

Answer 3

As all lines are lined up, you don't need a substitution to solve this problem. Just bring the cursor to the top left position (gg), then: CTRL+vGwlx

Levo

Answer 4

I think easiest way is to use cut.

just type cut -c n- <filename>

Settler

It is specifically asked "using vi" – Claudication

Answer 5

Try

:s/^.....//

You probably don't need the "^" (start of line), and there'd be shortcuts for the 5 characters - but simple is good :)

Abreast

For this to work globally (on all lines), add % before s. That is, use :%s/^.....// – Warm

Wow, can’t believe I missed that - thanks, Good catch. – Abreast

Answer 6

Since the text looks like it's columnar data, awk would usually be helpful. I'd use V to select the lines, then hit :! and use awk:

:'<,'>! awk '{ print $2 }'

to print out the second column of the data. Saves you from counting spaces altogether.

Ghiselin

It is specifically asked "using vi" – Claudication

Answer 7

:%s/^.\{0,5\}//g for global, since we want to remove first 5 columns of each line for every line.

Inbreathe

Answer 8

In my case, to Delete first 2 characters Each Line I used this :%s/^.\{0,2\}// and it works with or without g the same.

I am on a VIM - Vi IMproved 8.2, macOS version, Normal version without GUI.

Horton

Answer 9

:%norm! 5x applies the built-in x key command five times on the start of all lines

Reiser