How do I right-align a block of text to a specific column width using an Ex command?

Explanation

Vim has built-in Ex commands for text alignment — :right, :left, and :center — that work over any line range without plugins. These are handy for formatting comment banners, aligning output columns, or preparing plain-text tables.

How it works

• :[range]right {width} — right-aligns each line in the range by padding it with leading spaces until the last character falls on column {width}
• If {width} is omitted, Vim uses textwidth (or 80 if textwidth=0)
• :[range]left {indent} — removes leading whitespace (left-aligns), with an optional indent column
• :[range]center {width} — centers each line within {width} columns

Example

Starting with three lines:

Hello
World
Vim

After :%right 20:

               Hello
               World
                 Vim

After :%center 20:

       Hello
       World
         Vim

Tips

• Works naturally with visual selections: select lines in visual mode, then press : and type right 40
• Useful for creating decorative headers: :.center 60 centers the current line in a 60-column field
• :left 0 strips all leading indentation from a range — equivalent to :%s/^\s*//
• The width argument accepts Vim expressions, so :right &textwidth uses your configured textwidth