vim tabular only on the first match on the line?

Question

I\'m trying to format some python code with the tabular.vim plugin. It\'s currently a sqlalchemy declarative class, and looks something like this:

id     =           


        

Answer 1

As per this answer, instead of creating a static mapping for each case, you can do this dynamically by setting up a vim command like this:

command! -nargs=1 -range TabFirst exec  . ',' .  . 'Tabularize /^[^' . escape(, '\^$.[?*~') . ']*\zs' . escape(, '\^$.[?*~')

With this command, if you wanted to align based on the first = then you could do:

:TabFirst =

Or, if you wanted to align on the first { you could do:

:TabFirst {

This supports range selections as well as Tabularize's smart selection.