Trying to remove the first column of a document

Question

I'm using this command below to remove the first column of a document:

%s/^[^\t]*\zs\t[^\t]*\ze//g 

but it says command not found.

Any idea?

Answer 1

You need to write it in command mode, not normal. In other words, press : first.

:%s/^[^\t]*\zs\t[^\t]*\ze//g 

Edit: To remove the first column:

:%s/^\S*\s\+//

where \s is "whitespace" and \S is its inverse.

Answer 2

I don't get an error from your command, but it removes the second column. This command will remove the first column:

:%s/^[^\t]*\t\ze[^\t]*//g

Answer 3

You could also use Visual-Block mode.

On the first line of the file, in the first column, hit Control+v to get in Visual Block mode, followed by Shift+g (moves to the last line of the file) then use l to move over to the right as far as you want. You should see a visual selection of each column as you move to the right in the file. xwill then delete those columns.

See also: :he block

Answer 4

As I already answered on StackOverflow, you might use the following command:

:%s/^.//