Script for formatting code into columns

Question

Often I have code that I want to align based on similar structure of lines, not just the left-side auto indent. Is there a script out there that can do something like this? Here is an example of what I want to do. Given:

 self.colorOfBackground =? colorOfBackground self.colorOfLineForTime =? colorOfLineForTime self.marginOnBottom =? marginOnBottom self.marginOnTop =? marginOnTop ... 

I want to run a script and align each "column" on a tab so that they are aligned and easier to visually parse:

 self.colorOfBackground =? colorOfBackground self.colorOfLineForTime =? colorOfLineForTime self.marginOnBottom =? marginOnBottom self.marginOnTop =? marginOnTop ... 

I am thinking that a Perl or Python or AWK or some other scripting language could do this, but alas I know none of these. Till now I have been using Vim and its regex based substitution capabilities but I still spend most of the time manually spacing out the columns.

Answer 1

This will give you the expected result

File.txt :

self.colorOfBackground =? colorOfBackground self.colorOfLineForTime =? colorOfLineForTime self.marginOnBottom =? marginOnBottom self.marginOnTop =? marginOnTop 

When below command is used :

sed 's/^[[:blank:]]*//' File.txt | column -t -s " " 

This command will remove frontend spaces : sed 's/^[[:blank:]]*//' refer this stack overflow Question , explained in detail with an example what actually the command does stack overflow : click_here

Syntax :column -t [-s separator] [filename] -> column -t -s " "

–t : parameter to display the content in tabular format

-s : To separate the content based on a specific delimiter

Output of command :

self.colorOfBackground =? colorOfBackground self.colorOfLineForTime =? colorOfLineForTime self.marginOnBottom =? marginOnBottom self.marginOnTop =? marginOnTop 

Make sure before you make use of above command just align your entire data in file to left side in order to align data i have used : sed 's/^[[:blank:]]*//'

Answer 2

Even though you've already accepted an answer, the result that you want can obtained with just one awk or sed command without having to pipe it into the column command.

awk '{print $1"\t\t"$2"\t\t"$3}' column.txt sed -e 's/^[[:blank:]]*//' -e 's|\s|\t\t|g' column.txt 

The sed command first removes all blank space at the beginning of each line and then converts any remaining spaces into two tabs. It gives this output:

self.colorOfBackground =? colorOfBackground self.colorOfLineForTime =? colorOfLineForTime self.marginOnBottom =? marginOnBottom self.marginOnTop =? marginOnTop 

The awk command prints just the first column which are the strings beginning with self and then prints two tabs, the second column which is =?, another two tabs, and finally, the string in the third column.

self.colorOfBackground =? colorOfBackground self.colorOfLineForTime =? colorOfLineForTime self.marginOnBottom =? marginOnBottom self.marginOnTop =? marginOnTop 

To edit the file itself instead of sending it to standard output, use either of the following:

sed -i -e 's/^[[:blank:]]*//' -e 's|\s|\t\t|g' column.txt awk -i inplace '{print $1"\t\t"$2"\t\t"$3}' column.txt 

The awk command requires version 4.2 or later to have the -i inplace switch.

Answer 3

All you need is:

$ column -t file self.colorOfBackground =? colorOfBackground self.colorOfLineForTime =? colorOfLineForTime self.marginOnBottom =? marginOnBottom self.marginOnTop =? marginOnTop 

or if you prefer:

$ column -t -o' ' file self.colorOfBackground =? colorOfBackground self.colorOfLineForTime =? colorOfLineForTime self.marginOnBottom =? marginOnBottom self.marginOnTop =? marginOnTop $ column -t -o$'\t' file self.colorOfBackground =? colorOfBackground self.colorOfLineForTime =? colorOfLineForTime self.marginOnBottom =? marginOnBottom self.marginOnTop =? marginOnTop $ column -t -o$'\t\t' file self.colorOfBackground =? colorOfBackground self.colorOfLineForTime =? colorOfLineForTime self.marginOnBottom =? marginOnBottom self.marginOnTop =? marginOnTop 

Massage the column arguments to suit.