!{motion}{cmd}
The ! operator in normal mode lets you pipe any motion's text through a shell command and replace it with the output.
editing #editing #shell #external-command #normal-mode #filtering
:'<,'>!column -t
When working with data that has uneven spacing — such as variable assignments, CSV-like data, or configuration entries — you can select the lines and pipe t
visual-mode #visual-mode #editing #formatting #external-command #alignment
:'<,'>!awk '{print toupper($0)}'
Vim can pipe any visual selection through external Unix commands and replace the selection with the output.
visual-mode #visual-mode #external-command #awk #text-transformation
:'<,'>!awk '{printf "%-20s %s\n", $1, $2}'
By piping a visual selection through awk with printf formatting, you can align columns to fixed widths.
visual-mode #visual-mode #formatting #alignment #external-command
:%!tac
Vim doesn't have a built-in reverse command, but you can pipe the buffer through tac (reverse of cat) to flip line order.
