Question

Let’s say I have bunch of lines

    echo "<br/>";
    echo "<pre>";
    error_log("whatever");
    echo "</pre>";
    echo "<br/>";

and I want to comment them out, I can run this command

s/^/#

but it puts the # sign right in beginning of the line and not in front of first word so it looks like the lines below

#    echo "<br/>";
#    echo "<pre>";
#    error_log("whatever");
#    echo "</pre>";
#    echo "<br/>";

How can I make it look like more like the code below

    #echo "<br/>";
    #echo "<pre>";
    #error_log("whatever");
    #echo "</pre>";
    #echo "<br/>";

What’s the proper reg ex for that?

Answer 1

There are many ways. Here is one:

:'<,'>s/^\s*/\0#