Question

What’s the easiest way to delete the first 2 spaces for each line using VIM? Basically it’s repeating “2x” for each line.

Clarification: here the assumption is the first 2 characters are spaces. So the question is about doing indentation for multiple lines together.

Answer 1

Some more options. You can decided which is the “easiest way”.

Remove the first 2 characters of every line:

:%normal 2x

Remove first 2 characters of every line, only if they’re spaces:

:%s/^  /

Note that the last slash is optional, and is only here so that you can see the two spaces. Without the slash, it’s only 7 characters, including the :.

Move indentation to left for every line:

:%normal <<