Question

I have this lines

     aaaaa
bbbbbb
cccccc
dddddd

If I have the cursor in the line with a’s at the first column, how can i move the group of a’s in the same position as the rest of the lines?

Answer 1

There are three (generalized) ways to accomplish your goal:

1. To manually adjust indentation to the left, you can use << to shift left once (repeat with . to acheive desired level of indentation).

2. If you’re already in insert mode, Ctrl + d will shift the current line to the left.

3. Auto-indent using ==

However, given your initial description of being at column 1, and wanting the a‘s to be in line with the others, I would probably just use dta to delete until the first a.

edit: as Tim Pote notes, dw is a more efficient way to delete white space to the first character. I’m not sure exactly what you’re trying to accomplish from your description, though (i.e. are you merely trying to delete white space, or all characters until the a‘s begin?)