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I have the following lines. I'd like to replace multiple spaces with a single space in vim. How can I achieve this?

Thanks in advance.

Percent                      I4-15
b Percent and Fractions                   16-19
c Percent and Decimals                    20
d EstimatingPercents                     21
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1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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You can do it with a vim regex.

:%s# \+# #g

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  • 2
    Or use "\s" instead of " " to match any kind of whitespace.
    – Heptite
    Feb 20, 2014 at 1:18
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    Thanks it worked. What is #, \+# etc? Can you explain it please?
    – shinokada
    Feb 20, 2014 at 1:31
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    The basic construct of the command is s#search#replace#. Sometimes you see it as s///. The % before the s tells the regex to work on all lines in the vim buffer, not just the current. The space followed by \+ matches one or more spaces. The trailing g tells the regex to match multiple times in a single line.
    – User123456
    Feb 20, 2014 at 1:50
  • If you are bothered by replacing a single space with a single space (wasted effort) then, instead of ` \+` (one or more spaces) you can use ` \{2,\}` (two or more spaces) or __\+ (a space followed by one or more spaces--I am using "_" instead of " " because HTML refuses to display two consecutive spaces).
    – benjifisher
    Feb 20, 2014 at 1:57
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    For single line: :s/\s\+/ /g
    – denis.peplin
    May 13, 2015 at 10:05

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