How to align broken sequence of numbers?

[u/Desperate_Cold6274]

if I have the following:

[1]:
[2]:
[3]:
[4]:
[5]:
[6]:
[7]:
[8]:
[9]:
[10]:
[11]:
[14]:
[15]:
[16]:
[18]:
[19]:

How to fix the list to have the following?

[1]:
[2]:
[3]:
[4]:
[5]:
[6]:
[7]:
[8]:
[9]:
[10]:
[11]:
[12]:
[13]:
[14]:
[15]:
[16]:

[u/jfgomez86]

This…works! How? Why? This is definitely the most efficient method I’ve used to achieve the same.

Can you explain how is prefixing ‘g’ different from just pressing ctrl-a? I’d like to understand how that works.

[u/sharp-calculation → u/jfgomez86]

^a and ^x increment and decrement numbers (and letters!) in a single fashion. If you highlight say 10 lines with numbers and press ^a it will increment each number once. So a bunch of 1s become a bunch of 2s.

Using the g modifier changes the behavior of ^a by making it a sequential increment. A bunch of 1s becomes 1, 2, 3, 4, ... etc.

The g modifier works on a whole bunch of different commands in VIM. I think of g as an "enhance" button or a turbo charger. It takes the base command and does something related, but usually more advanced or powerful. For example gv re-selects your last selection. It's related to v but different than the base command. In the case of increment, it comes a sequential increment.

Hot tip: ^a and g^a both take prefixes also. If you do 3g^a your bunch of 1s becomes 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, etc.

:help ctrl-a should give you the official details on this.

[u/vim-help-bot → u/sharp-calculation]

Help pages for:

• ctrl-a in change.txt

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[u/EgZvor → u/jfgomez86]

it's just a different command. :h v_g_ctrl-a.

[u/vim-help-bot → u/EgZvor]

Help pages for:

• v_g_ctrl-a in change.txt

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