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If I want to get the length of each match within the parentheses in the following regex, how do I do it?:

^\(\-\+\s\)\+

I'm trying to modify the width of columns in a buffer with data that is laid out as a table. Since the first two rows of the table will look like this

 DESIGN_ID DESIGN_YEAR SOURCE_REFERENCE
---------- ----------- ----------------

I want to use the regular expression to find the current width of each column.

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Well, how do you want to capture it?

This will put it at the beginning of all the matching lines:

:%s/^-\+\%(\s-\+\)*\s\?$/\=strlen(submatch(0)) . ': '. submatch(0)

\= lets you substitute the result of a vimscript expression for a matching string. submatch(0) is the string matched (submatch(n) would be the nth group).

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  • with very magic: :%s/\v^-+%(\s-+)*\s?$/\=strlen(submatch(0)) . ': '. submatch(0)
    – Aaron Thoma
    Jun 25, 2011 at 11:39
  • instead of using + and \? here, I'd suggest using \{1,} and \{-}, because both gives you a bit more flexibility and makes it easier to change around. [pattern]\{n,m} means match where pattern between n and m times. [pattern]\{n,-} the '-' operator makes it non-greedy
    – Jeff Tratner
    May 13, 2012 at 5:19
  • The relevant help page for this can be found under sub-replace-expression.
    – timss
    Mar 11, 2016 at 21:38

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