How do I align columns in a visual selection using an external command?

Explanation

By piping a visual selection through awk with printf formatting, you can align columns to fixed widths. This is a quick way to format tabular data without plugins, leveraging Unix tools directly from Vim.

How it works

• :'<,'>! — pipe the visual selection through an external command
• awk '{printf ...}' — formats each line with fixed-width columns
• %-20s — left-align in a 20-character-wide field
• The output replaces the selected text

Example

:'<,'>!awk '{printf "%-20s %s\n", $1, $2}'

Before:
name value
longer_variable_name 42
x 100

After:
name                 value
longer_variable_name 42
x                    100

Tips

• Use column -t for simpler auto-alignment: :'<,'>!column -t
• For more columns, extend the printf: "%-15s %-10s %s\n", $1, $2, $3
• Use sort -k2 to sort by the second column simultaneously
• The column command is often simpler: :'<,'>!column -t -s',' for CSV data