How do I select columns in tab separated text?

Question

I have a list of items in a text file separated by 1 (one) tab character like this:

item one[tab]item two

Each item doesn't have the same length in characters. So a traditional column selection doesn't work. The block selection must stop at the "tab" character at each line.

How do a do it?

I'm using Windows 7. I would prefer to use a text editor than a spreadsheet program (as i already though of that).

User "Paul Lammertsma" offered a partial solution. I'm still hoping for a complete solution. I decided to add this comment and clarify my question a lit bit.

Answer 1

There are several text editors that allow for block selection. I'm not entirely sure if this would resolve your problem (if the text is wider than a tab, you will select text in other columns).

Context is a very simple editor that lets you do this by holding Alt while dragging. As a workaround for the problem above, you can set the tab width to the maximum of 32 in the Environment Options.

Notepad++ is a more flexible (and still actively developed) editor, which works in a similar way.

Answer 2

I think the quickest way would be to use a spreadsheet program. Import it into Excel as a tab-separated file - that will give you your two columns.

In Excel 2007 you'd do it by clicking Data -> Get External Data -> From text

Choose your file, and then in the Text Import Wizard, choose Delimited, and make sure you have Tab selected as your delimiter, then click Finish.