Is there a built-in method to jump to the next character after a tab character?

Question

I am editing tab-delimited data in a plaintext file (that was originally a spreadsheet) and I'd like to quickly jump forward to the next entry, the character after the next "tab" character.

So far the closest I've gotten is /\t/e+1. This works pretty well except that if comes to a blank entry - just a tab character with no word afterwards - the cursor appears at the end of the blank region rather than at the beginning.

Is there a good built-in method for this? Is there a way to make the cursor appear at the beginning of the tab for blank entries?

Answer 1

I don't think there is a built-in way to do it. Usual way is to map your own key to do what you want. In your case it might be something like:

nnoremap g<tab> /\t\zs\S<CR>

The difference to your regex is \zs\S meaning that it matches till \zs but actual match is the following part of regex \S (non-whitespace). And you don't have to specify e+1 option as it matches on the first non whitespace after a tab.

If you want to stop at any char, use . instead of \S:

nnoremap g<tab> /\t\zs.<CR>

Answer 2

You got a mapping answer, so I will just concentrate on the second part of your question:

Is there a way to make the cursor appear at the beginning of the tab for blank entries?

By default, the cursor will always be put on the end of a tab. You can switch it off, by setting :set list together with some nice tab highlighting: :set listchars=nbsp:χ,conceal:·,tab:>—,trail:•,precedes:…,extends:…,eol:¶

But there is no way to make this happen depending on the following character.

(originally from here: https://vi.stackexchange.com/a/2242/71)

Answer 3

If you can live with the fact that you would be able to position the cursor beyond the end of a line, you can

set virtualedit=all

One effect of this is that you are able to put the cursor halfway into a tab. Consequently, /\t/e+1 would put the cursor at the start of the second of two consecutive tabs.