Using Vim is like magic !!!
I had a file with about 300 lines of rows. I wanted to number each row from 1 to the last number
This is a sample csv file that represents the file that I was working with.
Name,City
Abcd,Bangalore
Pqr,London
Xyz,Paris
...
Lmn,Tokyo
It has 2 columns, “Name” and “City”. I wanted to insert a new column “Id” which numbers each row from 1 to the last number
Setup the stage for the magic show
It took me less than a minute to number all the 300+ lines using Vim.
The steps I followed in Vim for doing this tedious task ( for 300 lines ) was as follows:
- In the first row, add the text “Id,” at the beginning the line
- Move the cursor to the second line, first column
- Number every row with value 1 using the below steps
- Create a new column using “Vertical visual block”
- Insert the number 1 for each row
Ctrl_vGI1,EscEsc
Explanation for the above command:
- Ctrl_v : Vertical visual block start
- G : Take cursor to last line
- I : Take editor into Inert mode
- 1, : Insert the characters 1 and ,
- EscEsc : Repeat the change ( insert 1 ) in all selected lines
This resulted in the following new data
Id,Name,City
1,Abcd,Bangalore
1,Pqr,London
1,Xyz,Paris
...
1,Lmn,Tokyo
Abracadabra
Now, for the magic:
- Move the cursor to the third line, first column ( the second line already contains the required number 1, so don’t select it )
- To select the first column again either do
gv
or
Ctrl_vG
Then
gCtrl_a
This magically increments all the numbers sequentially resulting in the following
Id,Name,City
1,Abcd,Bangalore
2,Pqr,London
3,Xyz,Paris
...
328,Lmn,Tokyo
You would use the same keys irrespective of whether there were 300 or 300 million lines in the file !!!
To learn more about this exciting Vim magic (like) command
:help v_g_CTRL-A
Discussion
Start a discussion on GitHub about this article and let me know your thoughts or suggestions.