I want to find the most elegant way to replace every second space on each line with Vim. Most elegant solution accepted.
Example input
123 1234 1345 123456 12344567 12345678 123 1234 1345 123456 12344567 12345678 123 1234 1345 123456 12344567 12345678 Intended output
1231234 1345123456 1234456712345678 1231234 1345123456 1234456712345678 1231234 1345123456 1234456712345678 Assuming you want to remove all the odd-numbered spaces:
:s/\v (\S*( |$))/\1/g \v) to reduce the escaping needed\S*) followed by (another space or end-of-line))For each space matched at the start of the regex, the next space is eaten by the regex match and can't be part of another match. So this only affects the odd-numbered spaces.
A solution candidate with a regular expression and with the magic directive is
:.s@\v(\d+) (\d+)@\1\2 @g where matching numbers in the groups. It can be improved with
:.s@\v([^ ]+) ([^ ]+)@\1\2 @g so matching everything else except spaces in the groups.
Example
Input
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Its Output
12 34 56 78 910